LEXINGTON, MA— Phylos, Inc. has partnered today with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop high throughput methods for protein production to create research reagents and microarrays that may be used to design new drugs or disease diagnostic tools.
Under the terms of this collaboration, a team of LLNL scientists led by senior biomedical scientist Joanna Albala, will work closely with Phylos to develop automated methods for the expression and production of cellular proteins.
In addition, the partnership provides Phylos broad access to the full-length cDNA collection of the LLNL-maintained I.M.A.G.E. (Integrated Molecular Analysis of Genomes and their Expression) Consortium, which will be used for the expression of recombinant proteins.
Founded in 1993, the I.M.A.G.E. consortium is a world-wide effort to array, map and sequence all human genes as well as those of other species, such as mouse, and provide the clones and sequence information into the public domain.
"LLNL’s expertise at miniaturization and automation, coupled with Joanna Albala’s enthusiastic approach to apply this methodology to protein production, significantly advances Phylos’ ability to generate complex target proteins," said
Richard Wagner, Senior Vice President of Research at Phylos. "Phylos will use these target proteins for our own internal efforts, and to service our collaborators using our high throughput, custom binding proteins for research reagent and microarray applications."
" I am honored to have the opportunity to work with Phylos and we at LLNL are eager to embark into this partnership," Albala said. "The capabilities that Phylos has developed are very exciting and will certainly make valuable contributions to our efforts, as well as the growing field of proteomics and protein microarray technology."
Phylos has developed a broad enabling technology in combinatorial biology which it describes as mRNA display, otherwise known as Phylos’ PROfusion™ technology.
This technology, a cornerstone of Phylos’ platform in directed protein evolution, is based on the use of libraries of covalently linked nucleic acid - protein molecules.
PROfusion™ technology enables the rapid selection of specific proteins with desired properties. Once proteins are selected, their population can be significantly enriched by PCR-amplification of the genetic tag that is attached to each protein.
Strict control of the selection conditions, together with sequential rounds of selection and amplification, allows Phylos scientists to develop proteins that possess specific characteristics of interest, such as high affinity and specificity.
Phylos uses its PROfusion™ technology to produce and identify high affinity, target-specific binding proteins. The immediate focus of the company is to produce large numbers of binding proteins, based on its proprietary TRINECTIN™ protein framework, to allow the assembly of high-throughput protein profiling platforms, such as microarrays. In addition, the company is utilizing the technology to identify and validate new therapeutic targets, as well as to create new biotherapeutic molecules.
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a mission to ensure national security and to apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
LLNL news releases and photos are also available electronically on the World Wide Web of the Internet at URL http://www.llnl.gov/PAO and on UC Newswire. For additional information on Phylos, visit the company’s Internet web site at http://www.Phylos.com