Two new technologies that could make a significant impact on the pharmaceutical industry by improving protein analysis and accelerating drug discovery
NextGen Sciences is launching two core technologies with the potential to revolutionise protein research and make a significant impact on the pharmaceutical industry by improving protein analysis and accelerating drug discovery.
The first of these technologies is the a2DE, said to be the world's first fully automated two-dimensional electrophoresis system.
This is the only system for running two-dimensional gel electrophoresis without the need for user supervision or intervention.
NextGen Sciences has designed and developed the system in response to the demand for the technique of two-dimensional electrophoresis to be improved.
This technique is the most widely used separations method in protein research, and is thought of as the gold standard for protein separation.
Despite its popularity, two-dimensional electrophoresis has undergone few improvements in the last thirty years and is known as the workhorse of protein research.
The a2DE is set to change this, allowing protein researchers to spend time analysing their results, rather than trying to achieve them.
The a2DE has been designed specifically to minimise hands-on time, increase reproducibility, simplify the technique, and optimise results.
Within twenty-four hours the a2DE delivers high quality gels of enhanced resolution.
The second of NextGen Sciences's technologies is the Expressionfactory, which is a platform for systematic, automated and high throughput protein expression and purification.
The technology is described as the complete solution to the problems associated with protein expression.
There is a growing need for new tools to produce many hundreds of proteins for disease and drug discovery research, with uses including crystallography, high throughput screening, antibody production and characterisation, and protein micro-array applications.
The expressionfactory platform is a unique combination of biology, hardware and software tools that enable the entire process of expression vector construction, protein expression and subsequent purification to be automated.
The result is the systematic and parallel production of many hundreds of purified proteins with minimal hands-on time.
To produce samples of protein fit for their purpose, protein researchers may have to try many different combinations of vector construction, hosts used to express the protein, growth conditions for each host and different purification strategies.
Due to the numbers of proteins and different optimisation steps involved, this quickly becomes a sequence, sample and protein-tracking problem, which is solved by the information management system (IMS) underpinning the Expressionfactory.
Within this Oracle-based system the researcher can design, plan and execute their protein expression strategy. This is aided by the rules-based system and the inclusion of the Sapphire Lims product for sample tracking from LabVantage Solutions.
The IMS also controls the automation hardware so there is no need to separately programme the robotics once the design and planning have been completed.
The activities and whereabouts of all the samples are fed seamlessly back into the IMS ensuring a complete audit trail from gene to protein.
The revolutionary technologies have stirred significant interest in the protein research field, and the company's Huntingdon base has been host to major players in the pharmaceutical industry, who have been attending the site for demonstrations of the technologies during recent weeks.
The launch of the technologies coincides with the opening of the company's first international office in Bedford, Massachusetts.
The US operation will support the company's customer base in this key market and will provide NextGen Sciences with a sales, support and manufacturing base for their technologies outside the UK.
