BioLegend Enters License Agreement With Sanquin For Peptide-MHC Assay Technology

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BioLegend announces that it has licensed from Sanquin Blood Supply Foundation a novel technology to study antigen-specific T cells. Through a collaborative effort, Sanquin’s Reagents Division and The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), both in Amsterdam, have developed an MHC-multimer technology that allows the user to conveniently prepare their own customized tetramer reagents in their laboratories, as needed. This powerful technology is now available commercially from BioLegend, with the same high quality of manufacturing, superior customer support and excellent value that customers have come to recognize from BioLegend.

“By assigning a unique two-color coding to each MHC/peptide combination it is possible to detect multiple antigen-specific T cells with a single small volume of sample. We believe this approach will enable the scientific community to achieve their goals more quickly, easily and affordably than ever before”

Presented under the brand name Flex-T™, BioLegend currently offers biotinylated MHC/peptide monomers, with a variety of products to be added in the near future. “The Flex-T™ technology is very exciting as it allows for our customers to have more control over the reagent they want to use. By using ultraviolet radiation, the special pre-loaded peptide in the MHC molecules can be released and substituted by the researcher’s peptide of interest. This facilitates the research of antigen-specific T cells by flow cytometry and other techniques, and makes immune monitoring incredibly flexible,” said Gene Lay, President and CEO, BioLegend, winner of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2016 Life Sciences Award. “Sanquin is proud that its proprietary technologies support BioLegend to make the powerful immunological reagents readily available for biomedical research,” said Roel Melsert, managing director at Sanquin.

The addition of reagents to study antigen-specific T cells is an excellent match to BioLegend’s current portfolio. Plans to expand the Flex-T™ platform include pre-loaded tetramers to complement the flexible, ultraviolet-labile peptide loaded monomers, tetramer assembly kits, and custom screening services, among others. The affordability and flexibility of the products also allows for the use of combinatorial color coding. “By assigning a unique two-color coding to each MHC/peptide combination it is possible to detect multiple antigen-specific T cells with a single small volume of sample. We believe this approach will enable the scientific community to achieve their goals more quickly, easily and affordably than ever before,” said Gene Lay.

To learn more, visit: www.biolegend.com/flex-t

About BioLegend:

BioLegend develops and manufactures world-class, cutting-edge antibodies and reagents at an outstanding value to customers for biomedical research. The broad product portfolio includes flow cytometry, cell biology, and functional reagents for research in immunology, cancer research, stem cells, and more. The aggressive product development program is accomplished through technology licensing, collaborations, and internal research. BioLegend offers a wide range of custom services, including assay development, sample testing, and conjugation. BioLegend operates under QMS controlled conditions following the applicable regulatory requirements. For more information on BioLegend, visit: http://www.biolegend.com.

About Sanquin:

The Sanquin Blood Supply Foundation is responsible for blood supply on a not-for-profit basis and prepares advanced transfusion medicine and cellular therapies, fulfilling the highest demands for quality, safety and efficiency. Sanquin prepares and produces plasma pharmaceuticals from blood and plasmaphaeresis donations. By virtue of its research and diagnostic laboratories and its reagents unit, Sanquin develops, manufactures and sells a broad range of blood grouping and immune reagents, including several innovative products for diagnostic uses and for fundamental and clinical research. Sanquin makes its extensive expertise and in-house research on blood and immunology also available via contract services, for example, in production of cellular therapies and monitoring the effects of immunotherapies, vaccines and biologicals. For more information about the organization, please visit www.sanquin.nl. For more information about the MHC technology, please visit www.sanquin.nl/en/products-services/reagents/product-categories/cell-therapy/.