DAEJEON, Korea, June 25 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Panagene Inc., a Korean biotechnology firm developing novel biomaterials for post-genomic era, announced that it has developed a novel PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acid) chemistry, which leads to the manufacture of PNA monomers in a large scale at the lowest cost and to the efficient synthesis of PNA oligomers at higher purity. This new proprietary PNA chemistry will accelerate the development of diagnostic and therapeutic products derived from human genome project sequence data.
PNA is a nucleic acid analog in which the entire phosphate sugar backbone has been replaced by an uncharged polyamide backbone with the side groups, purine and pyrimidine bases, found in biological nucleic acids. PNAs mimic DNA but are known to be more stable and to bind stronger and more specific to single-stranded DNA or RNA than DNA. Due to the superior characteristics, PNA has been promising as the potential substitute for DNA in diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
But PNA has not been widely used due to its expensive price of monomer and oligomer. The new Panagene PNA technology enables a large-scale synthesis of PNA monomers and a convenient synthesis of PNA oligomer, with which synthesis of PNA monomers and oligomers at lower cost, higher yield, and higher purity than today’s standard was accomplished.
Dr. Sungkee Kim, CEO of Panagene states, “This new PNA chemistry makes parallel and large scale synthesis of oligomers possible and provides a solution to high throughput functional genomics study, molecular diagnostics, PNA array, and antisense therapy at an affordable cost. This new cost- efficient manufacturing technology of PNA oligomers is specially practical for antisense application where production scale and manufacturing cost of drug material is the first priority of consideration. Moreover, all modifications applied to the current PNA chemistry are compatible with the new chemistry and the oligomer synthesis is more applicable to a large scale synthesis with high yield and high purity.”
Recently, Panagene presented this new PNA chemistry at the TIDES 2004, Nucleotide and Peptide Conference, in Las Vegas, USA and was selected to receive best poster award. Panagene has started to actively seek strategic partners who can broadly exploit the advantages of this new PNA chemistry and accelerate PNA chip development, diagnostic and therapeutic products that will markedly improve the quality of healthcare delivery.
Contact: Panagene, Inc. Sunghee Lee +82-19-213-6373 http://www.panagene.com/
Panagene, Inc.
CONTACT: Sunghee of Panagene, +82-19-213-6373
Web site: http://www.panagene.com/
