Xantos Biomedicine and Qiagen announce a co-marketing agreement for genome-wide RNAi library with high-content cellular screening system
Xantos Biomedicine and Qiagen have announced a partnership for co-marketing Qiagen's proprietary Tom-amidite chemistry based genome-wide RNAi products with Xantos's automated cell-based screening platform, XantoScreen.
By combining the capabilities of both companies' platforms, customers will be able to rapidly perform gene analysis and unravel the function and role of genes that are relevant to their area of interest, it says.
Xantos provides XantoScreen for the discovery and functional validation of novel targets on a genome-wide basis.
The system enables high throughput and automated cDNA transfection studies (over expression of genes) or RNAi (gene silencing) to be carried out rapidly.
This powerful system can be customised to a range of high content cellular screening assays and enables individual cDNAs, RNAi molecules or proteins to be studied in combination with or without inhibitory molecules, to identify and validate targets, ligands, receptors, compounds or pathways.
Qiagen is a supplier of high performance validated siRNA libraries and holds a leading position in high throughput siRNA synthesis technology.
It employs its patented Tom-amidites chemistry to produce high performance purity (HPP) grade siRNA for efficient gene silencing.
As a licenced supplier of siRNA, Qiagen offers pre-designed, genome-wide siRNA molecules.
Qiagen's siRNA products combined with its RNA transfection, purification and detection technologies provide a fully integrated solution for ultra high-throughput gene silencing.
"We are delighted to form an alliance with Qiagen", said Stephan Wehselau, Xantos's chief executive officer.
"By joining forces with the market leader in siRNA based gene silencing we will significantly expand our customer base.
"Our customers will now be able to benefit from two technology platforms for functional gene analysis: the use of cDNA collections and Qiagen's siRNA reagents for gene silencing experiments".
"Xantos genome-wide cellular screening assay is a perfect match to Qiagen's human druggable genome siRNA set, and human whole genome siRNA set", said Jie Kang, Qiagen's vice president research and development.
"The option to study gene expression related phenomena from two angles provides the ability to gain unique new insights and help expand this rapidly growing field of research." Qiagen, a Netherlands holding company with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Italy, Australia, Norway, Austria, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands believes it is the world's leading provider of innovative enabling technologies and products for the separation, purification and handling of nucleic acids and proteins.
Qiagen has developed a comprehensive portfolio of more than 320 proprietary, consumable products for nucleic acid and protein separation, purification and handling, nucleic acid amplification, as well as automated instrumentation, synthetic nucleic acid products and related services.
Qiagen's products are sold in more than 42 countries throughout the world to academic research markets and to leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
In addition, Qiagen is positioning its products for sale into developing commercial markets, including applied testing markets, clinical research, nucleic acid-based molecular diagnostics, and genetic vaccination and gene therapy.
Qiagen employs more than 1500 people worldwide.
Xantos Biomedicine is a functional biology and drug discovery company that is focusing on the identification and validation of disease relevant human genes.
Studies on biological functions are carried out rapidly by screening for phenotypic changes caused by increase of gene function in mammalian cell systems.
For this Xantos has established the proprietary high-throughput, fully automated cellular gene-transfection and assay system XantoScreen that is used for several functional applications, including molecular drug profiling, target/pathway profiling, target and protein identification as well as lead identification.
XantoScreen enables the fully automated and standardised functional analysis of 100,000 to 300,000 genes per month in cell systems.
Xantos has one of the world's largest full-length human cDNA collections (35,000 clones), several high quality cDNA libraries from various human tissues and several cell systems available for high throughput analysis.
The company uses its technology for its own discovery programmes in cancer and metabolic diseases.
Xantos focuses on the development of therapeutics based on secreted proteins involved in angiogenesis of cancer cells, in differentiation of fat cells and in the induction of insulin resistance.
Xantos has already identified several disease relevant new targets and proteins and is searching for collaboration partners.
Xantos is offering its technology, the human cDNA collections, libraries and functional cell assay systems on a fee-for-service basis for technology-driven interactions.
