Artel and IonGate Biosciences announced their strategic partnership to support the growing application of IonGate's drug discovery technology
The German biotechnology company will leverage Artel's local infrastructure, customer relationships and market knowledge to increase the exposure and use of its discovery systems and assay development services in North America.
The partnership will focus on IonGate's Surfe2r technology, which enables more effective research involving drug targets such as membrane transporters and ligand-gated ion channels.
Membrane transport proteins play an important role in numerous biological functions, and have been linked to cardiac, neurologic and metabolic disorders, yet they represent a relatively unexplored segment of the drug discovery market.
The previous lack of technology for efficient transporter screening has led pharmaceutical companies to focus the majority of their research initiatives on other targets.
Ligand-gated ion channel proteins, while more frequently targeted, typically are also subject to less-than-optimal screening methods.
IonGate's Surfe2r (surface electrogenic event reader) technology represents a significant advance toward more efficient screening of transporters as well as ligand-gated ion channels.
"Transporter-focused drug discovery initiatives are poised for rapid growth worldwide, and the U.S.
demand for our surfe2r technology is rising," said Thiemo Gropp, managing director, IonGate Biosciences .
"With Artel's support and market expertise, we will be able to deliver the same personalized support to our customers in North America as we deliver to our customers in Europe".
"We chose Artel because of the company's strong relationships with biopharmaceutical companies, highly skilled staff, and deep understanding of our customers' needs," said Wolfgang Lerch, president, IonGate Biosciences.
"Our companies' synergistic cultures and strong customer-focused orientations will allow us to bring an unparalleled combination of excellent service and technology to the drug discovery industry".
"IonGate and Artel share a dedication to high-quality technology and superior customer service.
"We're excited to be working with a world class company with such cutting-edge technology," said Kirby Pilcher, president, Artel.
IonGate's systems are powerful tools for researchers in large pharmaceutical companies as well as academic environments.
The systems are valuable for core fundamental testing, early-stage screening, Adme studies, etc, and are able to meet the required throughput.
A label-free method, Surfe2r provides measurement assays which are more functionally relevant, and hence of higher value, for a growing array of protein targets.
The heart of this technology is an electrode biochip which measures the electrical activity of membrane-bound proteins.
This activity is observed through measurement of the capacitive charging of the sensor chip by ionic species as they are actively transported across the membrane by the protein targets of interest.
