HILLSBORO, Ore., March 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- FEI Company and Sweden-based Sidec Technologies AB today announced that the two companies will collaborate on the commercialization of Protein Tomography solutions and services based on Sidec’s proprietary software and intellectual property, and FEI’s transmission electron microscopes (TEMs).
Protein Tomography is a new technology developed to address critical issues around drug target validation and translational medicine in the pharmaceutical industry, improving target validation processes and shortening development time for new pharmaceuticals. Based on current market practices, Protein Tomography is estimated to be a (U.S.) $200 million market with the potential to grow several fold within a few years.
“Understanding drug targets and the disease mechanisms on a molecular level is extremely difficult, resulting in severe problems when translating bench research into human biology,” commented Hans Johansson, president and CEO of Sidec. “Many drugs fail when they progress from pre-clinical studies to clinical trials. Imaging and comparing drug targets from different species using Protein Tomography provides insight into the molecular differences underlying this attrition.”
FEI has led the development of cryo electron microscopy for the imaging of biological structures in close collaboration with many top level academic groups in Europe and the US. Sidec is pioneering the field of protein imaging using cryo electron tomography and has several research collaborations with global pharmaceutical companies.
Protein Tomography consists of advanced electron microscopy instrumentation, proprietary data acquisition and reconstruction software as well as scientific expertise to enable the imaging and analysis of individual protein molecules in cells and tissues. FEI and Sidec offer this as a service through Sidec, as an on-premises service, or through a software and other intellectual property license arrangement combined with a TEM system sale.
“FEI is very pleased to offer this advanced solution for Protein Tomography with Sidec,” commented Vahe Sarkissian, president and CEO of FEI. “We have a long-standing reputation for providing enabling tools for life science. As we move from the genomics to the proteomics era, we will continue to identify customer needs and work to deliver the advanced applications that our growing and diverse life science market, which we refer to as NanoBiology, demands.”
About Sidec Technologies AB
Sidec Technologies AB provides solutions to significantly improve the predictive value of pre-clinical experiments. The company’s proprietary 3-D reconstruction technology and electron tomography enables the visualization of disease events at a molecular level, in virtually any environment and biological context, thereby bridging the current gap between the test tube and human biology. With offices in Stockholm and Lund, Sweden and San Diego, California, Sidec offers contract research to the pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions. More information can be found at www.sidec.com.
About FEI
FEI’s Tools for Nanotech(TM), featuring focused ion- and electron-beam technologies, deliver 3D characterization, analysis and modification capabilities with resolution down to the sub-Angstrom level and provide innovative solutions for customers working in NanoBiology, NanoResearch and NanoElectronics. The company’s products for NanoBiology address a robust set of applications including 3-D cryo TEM and SEM applications and nanoparticle characterization and analysis. With R&D centers in North America and Europe, and sales and service operations in more than 50 countries around the world, FEI is bringing the nanoscale within the grasp of leading researchers and manufacturers and helping to turn some of the biggest ideas of this century into reality. More information can be found on the FEI website at: www.fei.com.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that include statements about future development of, the market for and potential benefits of TEM-based Protein Tomography to aid in drug development as well as the expected size of that market. Factors that could affect these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the inability of FEI or Sidec to successfully complete the development described, the emergence of competing technologies that offer more effective or less expensive solutions to TEM- based Protein Tomography, failure of the new application to function as expected, failure of the market to develop as expected and the inability of customers to develop and deploy the expected new applications or to achieve the performance described. Please also refer to our Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, Forms 8-K and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for additional information on these factors and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. FEI assumes no duty to update forward-looking statements
FEI
CONTACT: Dan Zenka, APR, Global Public Relations of FEI Company,+1-503-726-2695, or dzenka@feico.com; or Margaretha Gadnell, Marketing ofSidec Technologies AB, +46-8-47-77-600, or margaretha.gadnell@sidec.com
