SAN RAMON, Calif., June 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Odyssey Thera, Inc. announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 7,062,219 for single- and multi-color protein-fragment complementation assays (PCA) in drug discovery.
The patent provides methods for constructing diverse assays in live cells for detecting dynamic changes in protein complexes and pathways. Additional methods describe application of these assays to automated, high throughput and high content screening. Broad claims cover the construction of assays on known and unknown pathways, using a wide array of reporter systems, expression strategies and assay formats.
“This patent describes a unique and flexible strategy for drug discovery,” said John K. Westwick, Ph.D., patent co-author and Odyssey Thera President and CSO. “The strategy achieves three key goals: first, a massive increase in the scope of cell-based, biologically relevant screens for drug discovery and profiling. Importantly, the claims are not limited to particular targets, cell types or assay formats, and we’ve constructed assays for all major target classes. Second, we describe how these tools are applied to high throughput drug discovery, enabling the screening of large compound libraries. Finally, we demonstrate that the assays accurately reflect the activity of drug targets in their native context, resulting in screening hits of greater quality and likelihood of success.”
Professor Stephen Michnick of the University of Montreal, PCA inventor and co-author on the patent, added, “I originally set out to address the need for a universal approach to study the dynamics of biochemical pathways. That it could also be used to decipher drug actions on signaling pathways was implicitly understood, but I am gratified that this patent and our recent publications demonstrate the practical realization of how this technology can be broadly applied to improve pharmaceutical R&D.”
This patent adds to over forty issued patents and pending applications covering broad aspects of pathway-based discovery technologies, and solidifies Odyssey Thera’s leadership position in these fields.
About Odyssey Thera
Odyssey Thera, Inc. is a privately held biotechnology company that is pioneering a pathway-based approach to drug discovery. The use of human cells instead of isolated proteins aids in the identification of drug leads with desirable profiles, and enables early attrition of compounds with unintended effects in human cells. The company is applying its strategy both for the benefit of its pharmaceutical partners, and to identify small molecules that block key cancer pathways in man. Visit Odyssey Thera’s website at http://www.odysseythera.com.
Odyssey Thera, Inc.
CONTACT: John K. Westwick, Ph.D., President and CSO of Odyssey Thera,Inc., +1-925-242-5011
Web site: http://www.odysseythera.com//
