Strategic Diagnostics reports that Berlex, a US affiliate of Schering, has extended its services agreement to include SDI's newly commercialised Genomic Antibodies offering
Under terms of this amended agreement, Strategic Diagnostics (SDI) will provide polyclonal and monoclonal genomic antibodies to Berlex.
Matthew Knight, president and CEO of Strategic Diagnostics commented: "We are extremely pleased to have a world-class company recognise the utility of Genomic Antibodies".
"The SDI Genomic Antibodies process significantly reduces the time required to produce a custom antibody for Berlex and Genomic Antibodies are successfully produced to traditionally difficult antigen targets such as transmembrane proteins, membrane-associated proteins and highly conserved proteins, which will help Berlex to identify and market new pharmaceuticals more quickly.
"We are just beginning our commercial efforts for this exciting new offering and continue to interact with a number of significant companies and research initiatives".
"We believe we bring significant value to our customers by decreasing the time to deliver new diagnostics and or therapeutics to the market".
About Genomic Antibodies.
SDI's proprietary approach to antibody generation enables research organizations in target market segments to increase their success rate of identifying potential therapeutic or diagnostic protein targets.
This is accomplished by providing large numbers of unique antibody reagents generated from customer-specified genetic sequence information.
Traditional methods of making antibodies to proteins require that the protein of interest be produced and purified in relatively large quantities prior to injection for antibody production.
The SDI Genomic Antibodies process eliminates the need to prepare peptide or protein antigen for injection.
Instead, synthetic DNA, representing the genetic sequence of interest is injected directly, via a proprietary process that produces antibodies to the protein encoded by the DNA.
SDI's Genomic Antibodies have demonstrated the ability to produce specific antibodies to native protein.
The process is capable of simultaneously delivering large numbers of antibody reagents, each with a unique specificity, facilitating large-scale biomarker identification, drug development, and academic research.
The exponential increase in genetic information available from all types of living organisms has created a need for large numbers of antibody reagents to detect the proteins produced by these genes.
The Company estimates the total market opportunity for antibody services available to Strategic Diagnostics, through its Strategic BioSolutions brand, and available to its competitors, to be $300 million and growing at 20 percent annually.
Strategic Diagnostics develops, manufactures and markets biotechnology-based detection solutions to a diverse customer base, across multiple industrial and human health markets.
By applying its core competency of creating custom antibodies to assay development, the Company produces unique, sophisticated diagnostic testing and reagent systems that are responsive to customer diagnostic and information needs.
Customers benefit with quantifiable return on investment by reducing time, labour, and/or material costs.
All this is accomplished while increasing accuracy, reliability and actionability of essential test results.
The company is focused on sustaining this competitive advantage by leveraging its expertise in immunology, proteomics, bio-luminescence and other bio-reactive technologies to continue its successful customer-focused research and development efforts.
Recent innovations in high throughput production of antibodies from genetic antigens will complement the company's established leadership in commercial and custom antibody production for the research, human/animal diagnostics, and pharmaceutical industries, and position the company for broader participation in the pharmacogenomics market, it says.
