ATUM, Just Biotherapeutics collaborate to speed up drug discovery

ATUM CEO Dr Jeremy Minshull said: “We love everything about Just’s mission, and we are delighted that our Leap-In technology will be used to help democratize access to life-changing, life-saving drugs.

Just creates new cost-effective discovery and manufacturing platforms to make biologic medicines accessible to global markets.

The Leap-In system enables researchers to quickly and efficiently produce stable, high producing cell lines, therefore moving promising therapeutics to the market faster and less expensively than other methods.

Just CEO Jim Thomas said: “We are pleased to be working with innovative technology solutions like those provided by ATUM.

“The Leap-In Transposase system fits well with our biologics platform, helping us achieve higher expression levels more rapidly than conventional cell line development methods.”

Just was granted the R&D and commercial license after previewing the technology via an evaluation license from ATUM.

ATUM has discovered, characterized and patented two new families of transposases. These have been engineered using ATUM's ProteinGPS technology for complex genome engineering of mammalian cells, including the rapid generation of high titer protein expression lines.

The Leap-In Transposase® rapidly catalyzes the stable integration of genes into a target genome. In contrast to slower more traditional "random integration" methods where the introduced DNA is randomly fragmented and often rearranged, Leap-In perfectly maintains the structure of the integrating genes. Leap-In thus produces more stable, higher producing lines. ATUM's Leap-In technology is protected by over a dozen pending and issued patents.

ATUM, formerly DNA2.0, offers an integrated pipeline of tools including gene design, optimization and synthesis, expression vectors, and platforms for protein and strain engineering and production.

ATUM exploits the dependence of biological activity on well-designed sequences. ATUM’s tools and solutions are fueling the transformation of biology from a discovery science to an engineering discipline

Just is a unique platform company that integrates the design, development and manufacture of biologics. With deep experience in the fields of protein, process and manufacturing sciences, the Just team came together to solve the scientific and technical hurdles that block access to life changing protein therapeutics; from the design of therapeutic molecules to the design of the manufacturing plants used to produce them.