Description:
Improved Molecular Function Screening with Chimeric Minimotif Decoys
Invention Summary
High-throughput screening is a widely used process for drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. Chimeric minimotif decoys (CMDs) are a revolutionary new tool that enables these screens to identify known molecular functions within cellular processes. By cross-referencing results of a CMD screen with a database of some 300,000 peptide snippets (called minimotifs), this novel process helps identify and test strategies for molecular disruption. With this new type of high-throughput screen able to consider millions of possibilities simultaneously, comprehensive testing that previously might have taken 3 to 5 years now requires only 3 to 5 days. The process has already shown success in disabling the HIV virus before it can infect healthy cells and replicate.
Market Opportunity
Molecular diagnostics is a growing industry projected to be worth $22.1 billion by 2020. This new process could save pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars in research costs by helping them more efficiently target testing strategies in the development of life-saving drugs. As a screening tool, the technology advances any discipline conducting biological experiments, and has applications in medicine, agriculture, forensics, and national defense.
Features and Benefits
• Simultaneously tests millions of genetic peptide combinations
• Reduces time required for comprehensive molecular function screening from years to days
• Shown to block HIV replication and ability to infect healthy cells
• Promising early results for applicability fighting other pathogens
• Lab awarded $400,000 grant from National Institute of Health to fund further CMD research
Intellectual Property Patent filed