Woburn, MA, March 20, 2006 - BioTrove, Inc. and Blue Sky Biotech, Inc. announce a collaborative effort to provide a unique service solution, utilizing mass spectrometry-based high-throughput screening assays on previously unscreenable drug targets. Blue Sky will provide pharma-grade proteins that pharmaceutical companies can quickly screen against their entire small molecule libraries. BioTrove will utilize its proprietary RapidFire™ screening technology that has successfully screened millions of compounds.
The collaboration will initially focus on high value targets in key therapeutic areas such as metabolic disorders and oncology. Specific examples of current projects include acyl-coenzyme A diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT), 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11ß-HSD), desaturases, and a family of histone deacetylases (HDACs).
BioTrove's RapidFire™ screening technology combines innovative micro-fluidics and high-throughput mass spectrometry to identify lead compounds against a wide variety of challenging enzymatic targets. High throughput assays are rapidly developed and utilize the direct detection of native, label-free substrate and product. This allows screening of a wide variety of targets, including many that are difficult or impossible to screen with conventional approaches.
"We are excited to offer the pharmaceutical community a complete HTS solution around a suite of enzymatic targets that clearly have high thereapeutic and economic value. This relationship will expand our growing list of pharmaceutical business partners" said Can "Jon" Özbal, director of RapidFire technologies at BioTrove.
Blue Sky Biotech, Inc. is an integrated service provider of "Gene to Screen" discovery biologicals. Currently, Blue Sky offers four linked laboratory service segments: Molecular Biology, Tissue Culture/Fermentation, Protein Sciences, and Cell Biology. This pre-clinical contract service bundle offers research-based drug discovery clients a convenient source of pharma-grade research tools.
"The unique combination of RapidFire™ HTS technology and Blue Sky Biotech's reagent provision expertise will provide our mutual customers with an immense competitive advantage in drug-discovery," said Paul Wengender, president of Blue Sky Biotech.
For more information, or to discuss our first fully validated assay system (acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase; ACC), please visit us at Booth #100 at ScreenTech, March 22nd - 24th, in San Diego, CA.
About BioTrove, Inc.
BioTrove offers two innovative platform technologies that dramatically increase the throughput of pharmaceutical screening and SNP genotyping.
RapidFire™ Lead Discovery enables drug developers to analyze samples using ultra high-throughput mass spectrometry in less than 8 seconds per sample. This technology enables difficult targets (lipids, fatty acids, phospholipids, steroids, and prostaglandins) to be tested using a high-throughput, native detection method.
The OpenArray™ platform enables genomics researchers to generate up to hundreds of thousands of data points per day. The flexible format of the OpenArray™ plate allows researchers to adjust to their changing needs in sample and assay numbers. Additionally, the nanoliter scale of this flexible system makes high-throughput genotyping economical.
About Blue Sky Biotech, Inc.
Blue Sky Biotech is a Contract Research Organization serving the research-based drug discovery community. Blue Sky produces high quality reagents using the latest state-of-the-art technologies. Blue Sky is located in Worcester, MA.
For more information, please visit www.biotrove.com or www.blueskybiotech.com or contact:
Selena Larkin, Ph.D.
BioTrove, Inc.
703-491-1833
slarkin@biotrove.com
Paul Wengender
Blue Sky Biotech
paul@blueskybiotech.com
Courtney Harris
Feinstein Kean Healthcare
courtney.harris@fkhealth.com
(617) 761-6744
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