New Service to be Introduced at Drug Discovery Technology Conference
Woburn, MA, August 11, 2003—BioTrove,
Inc. today introduced the Momentum™
technology, a patented ultra high-throughput mass spectrometry service
enabling microliter-scale functional assay development and screening of
intractable targets for which current technology is not an option. Through
the Momentum Screening Service, BioTrove collaborates with customers to
develop label-free assays and to screen chemical libraries against biological
targets. Detailed information about the technology is available at BioTrove's
Booth # 2023 at The Drug Discovery Technology™ World Congress, being
held August 11 - 13, 2003 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass.
While genomics and proteomics has led to the discovery of a large number
of
novel drug targets, the development of assays for screening these targets
is a key bottleneck in the drug discovery process. Momentum's ability
to directly
measure native biological substrates greatly reduces assay development
time by eliminating the need to develop and validate complex assays using
non-native substrates, indirect detection schemes and radioactivity. Momentum
is the second integrated platform BioTrove offers to reduce assay development,
screening time and expenses as well as target and reagent costs.
BioTrove's Living Chip™ system conducts rapid and parallel nanoliter-scale
liquid processing for ultra high-throughput screening and storage. According
to President and Chief Executive Officer of BioTrove, Dr. Colin J.H. Brenan,
"With Momentum, BioTrove has the ability to unlock the value of intractable
targets by increasing the speed to lead discovery. We can now provide
customers with solutions that were essentially unsolvable with standard
methods. In addition, for many applications that can be solved by conventional
methods, Momentum delivers higher quality data, in terms of minimizing
false positive and negative hits."
The maximum sustainable throughput of the Momentum system is one sample
per second and it allows for the mass spectrometric analysis to be performed
in the presence of assay components such as salts, buffers, detergents,
enzymes and co-factors. With Momentum, an assay can be developed and validated
for a novel target and screened against a small molecule library in less
than one month. Dr. Can C. Ozbal, program manager for Momentum adds, "BioTrove
plans to provide pharmaceutical partners with high-quality primary screening
services for a wide range of enzymatic assays, allowing them to increase
productivity, decrease the time associated with compound screening and
enable the development of difficult targets previously overlooked due
to technical challenges." The key component of Momentum is the Lab-on-a-Tape(TM)
instrument. It is a turnkey desktop-sized system that processes fluidic
samples continuously in a manner similar to an assembly line incorporating
liquid-handling stations designed to carryout the assay protocol in a
robust and fully automated fashion. Assay cost is reduced through lowered
target and reagent consumption, saving time and money in upstream protein
production. To date, Momentum has been used on a wide range of targets
in many therapeutic areas including metabolic disorders, inflammation,
cardiovascular, oncology, immunology, CNS/neurology, anti-infectives and
pain management. Substrates and products that have been analyzed include
compounds such as fatty acids, lipids, phospholipids, phosphatidylcholines,
sphingolipids, steroids, prostaglandins, peptides, nucleotides/oligonucleotides,
neurotransmitters and very small molecules (less than 150 mass units).
BioTrove has received financial support for the development of Momentum
through a collaborative agreement with Pfizer, Inc.
About BioTrove
BioTrove, Inc. is a privately held, biotechnology company focused on
leveraging revolutionary micro- and nano-scale engineering solutions to
overcome current bottlenecks in pharmaceutical drug discovery and biotechnology.
BioTrove has developed two innovative nanofluidic technologies - the Living
Chip™ and Momentum™ - that enable the rapid processing of molecular
information encoded in nanoliter reaction volumes. BioTrove offers integrated
library storage and screening services based on the core technology as
well as advanced instrumentation to partners.
For more information contact:
Dr. Colin Brenan
President and Chief Executive Officer
BioTrove, Inc.
info@biotrove.com
Shannon Altimari
Feinstein Kean Healthcare
saltimari@fkhealth.com
(617) 577-8110
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