BERLIN—JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH, a wholly ownedsubsidiary of BioNTech AG, and the Institute for Medical Immunology at theCharité in Berlin recently announced a collaborative agreement to developserological peptide markers for the differential diagnosis of chronic fatiguesyndrome (CFS).
CFS is a debilitating and complex disorder characterized byprofound fatigue. Symptoms affect several body systems, frequently resulting inbroadly reduced participation in daily activities. Definitive diagnosis of CFSis difficult and a diagnostic test is not available. Currently, diagnosis ofCFS is achieved through the process of eliminating other diseases that havechronic fatigue as a symptom.
The goal of the partnership is to combine the long-termexpertise at the Charité Clinics for Immune Deficiencies in diagnosing CFSpatients with JPT's high-content peptide microarray approach to discover seromarkers that enable thedevelopment of a diagnostic test system.
"Our previous and ongoing research at the Institute forMedical Immunology indicates a chronic activation of the immune system for a portionof our CFS patients," said Prof. Carmen Scheibenbogen, the project team head atthe Charité, in a press release announcing the collaboration. "Preliminaryresults using JPT's peptide microarray technology let us hope to find distinctserological markers that allow better diagnosis and treatment of CFS patientsin the future."
Holger Wenschuh, CEO of JPT, added, "The previous success ofour peptide microarray platform technology in identifying seromarkers in HIV,autoimmune diseases and cancer has led to this exciting opportunity to use ourarrays to systematically explore other indications with high and unmetdiagnostic and therapeutic need."
The collaboration project is supported in part by Pro FIT, afunding program of the Investitionsbank Berlin and by the European Union.
JPT Peptide Technologies is a provider of peptide-basedproducts and services, including custom peptides, peptide arrays andready-to-use kits and profiling assays.
The Institute for Medical Immunology is a research instituteof the medical faculty of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Its facilitiesinclude a biosafety level III unit, where equipment is organized intotechnology platforms dedicated to flow cytometry, cell culture, molecularbiology and microsurgery.
Neither partner responded to requests for interviews.
