Tools and services making the rounds

Find out about new offerings from BioTek, Repligen, Flow Eighteen38, and Cresset

DDNews Staff
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Tools and services making the rounds

BioTek announces new confocal imaging reader

BioTek, a part of Agilent, has released the new Cytation C10 Confocal Imaging Reader, which combines automated digital confocal and widefield microscopy with conventional multimode microplate reading. The spinning disk confocal module reportedly adds increased resolution and optical sectioning capabilities. Cytation C10 also includes widefield fluorescence, brightfield, and phase contrast optics. The multimode module has variable bandwidth monochromator-based optics for specificity and sensitivity. System control, image, and data analysis is provided by Gen5 software.

Affinity resin for purification of COVID-19 vaccines

Repligen Corp., a life-sciences company focused on bioprocessing technology, and Navigo Proteins GmbH, a protein engineering company specializing in novel affinity ligand development, have completed the development and initiated commercial launch of NGL COVID-19 Spike Protein Affinity Resin, a novel affinity resin to be utilized in the purification of COVID-19 vaccines.

The availability of this COVID-19 affinity resin is the result of an accelerated program to provide COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers with a high purity capture step, decreasing processing time and significantly improving overall yield in the production of these critical vaccines.

Said Ralf Kuriyel, Repligen’s senior vice president R&D: “We are very pleased to launch this resin and are very encouraged by the positive customer feedback on its overall performance in the development and manufacture of Spike Protein based vaccines.”

NGL COVID-19 Spike Protein Affinity Resin will be manufactured and marketed by Repligen. Resin samples are available immediately and can be ordered in Repligen’s prepacked OPUS columns to expedite and support evaluations and scale-up. 

Protein production and antibody characterization

FairJourney Biologics (FJB) and IONTAS, both focused on the discovery and optimization of antibodies, have launched a new protein sciences division called Flow Eighteen38. The new business unit has been introduced to accelerate customer antibody research projects, by delivering reagents, purified proteins, and characterization data on antibody panels and leads.

As the market for antibody therapeutics continues to grow, there is an increased need for rapid purification and comprehensive antibody characterization to support lead selection and enable a swift transition to manufacturing. FJB Group’s new division will focus on addressing the purification and characterization needs for a broad range of customers, from research institutions and start-ups to globally operating biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies.

Flow Eighteen38 offers antibody production, from 96-well plates to deliver micrograms up to large scale to deliver grams. The new services also comprise technologies for further functional and biophysical characterization including mass spectrometry, SPR, DLS, SLS, cIEF, CE-SDS, and chromatography methods. The services include antigen production, for use as immunogens and to generate new antibodies and reagents for research.

“Flow Eighteen38 offers standalone, bespoke, antibody purification and characterization capabilities to our growing network,” said Dr Antonio Parada, CEO at FJB. “This is complementary to our mammalian display and phage display discovery platforms and will further reduce risk for our partners by selecting the right antibody lead for cell line development and manufacturing.”

Added Maria Pajuelo, CSO at FJB: “We see Flow Eighteen38 as a significant milestone in combining knowledge across our organization into a new business unit. We look forward to expanding on our innovation in antibody discovery into the protein purification and characterization space, to offer faster and quality solutions for our current and future partners.”

New features for scaffold hopping and bioisostere replacement software

Cresset, a provider of software for molecule discovery and design, recently announced the release of Spark V10.6. This release of the scaffold hopping and bioisostere replacement solution further supports the exploration of new chemical space through new and improved search methods to generate innovative ideas for drug discovery projects. A new docking feature enables medicinal and computational chemists to find novel results not mapped by an existing starter or reference molecule.

 “The introduction of docking to Spark is an exciting development which will enable research chemists to explore unoccupied pockets in the target protein and map out new protein-ligand interactions.” said Dr Giovanna Tedesco, head of products. “We have also made significant improvements to the more traditional Spark calculation methods, which increase the accuracy with which the tool finds new bioisosteres. These enhancements will further support researchers in their efforts to generate chemically diverse candidates to escape IP and toxicity traps.”


DDNews Staff

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