The patent protects a procedure for the selective identification of improved protein variants in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, France, the UK, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.
The German patent of this family of patents had been granted as early as 2007. An application for a comparable protection for North America has been filed under the international patent process, the company said.
The patent constitutes the basis for a proprietary technology platform, which allows to significantly improve the efficiency and activity of protein-based therapeutics, vaccines and industrial enzymes.
According to the company, the new technology relies on a continuous one-step process where the generation and screening of protein variants run virtually simultaneously. The procedure allows identifying optimal variants of a protein from a considerably larger pool much quicker than with conventional multi-stage processes.
Ralf Wagner, CEO of Geneart, said: We have reached another milestone for the extension of our proprietary technology portfolio in the field of gene evolution by being granted the European patent. It is our stated goal to not only offer our customers gene variants and gene libraries for screening experiments but, with the successful completion of this project, to also deliver the improved protein over the mid-term.