Strategic Partnership created to accelerate implementation of automated system for optimisation and production of recombinant proteins
The Automation Partnership has formed a strategic partnership with EMD Biosciences, a supplier of high quality life science reagents.
The partnership will enable TAP and EMD to optimise cell lysis and affinity purification products specifically for use with Piccolo, TAP's fully automated system for optimisation and production of recombinant proteins.
Applying key reagents from the EMD portfolio to the Piccolo flexible, robotic system ensures scientists can immediately employ Piccolo for their research, thus generating proteins from microbial or insect cells, without having to spend time optimising protocols for cell lysis or affinity purification.
Additionally, the TAP-EMD partnership is allowing EMD to understand the Piccolo system's functionality and this will help streamline the logistics of ordering and reagent supply to it.
Piccolo, described as an essential system for assay development and protein engineering laboratories, was developed in consultation with a consortium of leading experts from three major pharmaceutical companies.
The system, which combines incubation with automated harvesting, lysis and purification units will be fully compatible with EMD's Novagen brand reagents and means scientists can rapidly identify the best construct and host strain, as well as recreate optimal culture conditions for target proteins.
Tom Foti, director of business development at EMD, states: "We are pleased to be working alongside such a high-quality company as TAP, which is willing to expend considerable energy ensuring that our cell culture, lysis, and affinity purification reagents are fully compatible with its system.
"The combination of our reagents and the Piccolo system creates a powerful platform that will allow drug discovery researchers to streamline the painstaking process of protein expression optimisation and, thus, enable them to more rapidly screen and identify medically relevant proteins".
Richard Wales, of the business development group at TAP continues: "We are equally delighted to be working with EMD in a true partnership because the company has an excellent reputation for providing a comprehensive range of innovative products for cell lysis and affinity purification.
"Their combined manufacturing capacity and staff expertise means they really understand and can address the strategic issues in large scale-protein supply so vital to working with drug discovery and development programmes".
Wales concludes: "We believe the addition of optimised consumables to Piccolo will help scientists produce specific proteins in days rather than months. "Having more time to study their proteins will enable better defined compounds to advance into pre-clinical research and could be a significant factor in greatly reducing clinical phase compound attrition rates through earlier decision making".
