The technology, known as UCOE (ubiquitous chromatin opening element), improves the yield, consistency and stability of protein production in cultured mammalian cells, allowing simpler and quicker generation of proteins at small scale for drug discovery and research, as well as quicker and easier isolation of stable, highly productive cell lines suitable for larger-scale manufacture of protein therapeutics.
Further applications of the technology include gene therapy, transgenics and generation of cell lines for drug screening.
The technology is under license to a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in North America, Europe and Japan, including Medarex and Maxygen.
“The UCOE technology will augment our cell line development and protein expansion capabilities, thereby improving our customers’ abilities to more efficiently manufacture recombinant proteins in large scale, while aiding in the development of the next generation of our customers’ therapeutic proteins,” said David Bellitt, president of Celliance Corporation.