Prolias in the News

May 2008

Prolias announces the issuance of US Patent No. 7,374,900, "Fluorescent substrates for detecting organophosphatase enzyme activity." One of the important applications of this substrate is the detection and quantitation of the organophosphatase activity. Paraoxonase (PON1), a plasma organophosphatase is an enzyme that circulates as a component of high-density lipoprotein complexes (HDL "good cholesterol"), thus, this new substrate for PON1 has potential applications in risk assessment and diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

July 2007

Prolias completes exclusive license of ARC platform technology. The intellectual property generated at the ARC has been licensed exclusively to Prolias for commercialization and development. The license includes issued patents US 7, 217 507, Methods for Detecting Ligands and Targets in a Mixture and US Patent 7, 223, 734, Plasma Protein Binding Ligands. The license also includes patent applications underlying the FIoNA and ProSpectrum sample preparation technologies. In addition, the scientific team at the ARC that developed the technology has transferred to Prolias.

May 2007

Prolias announces the issuance of US Patent 7, 223,734, Plasma Protein Binding Ligands. The patent issued May 2007, with a priority date of April 14, 2003. This patent covers ligands identified by methods including the bead blot for the purification of selected proteins from plasma. The patent has been licensed to ProMetic Life Sciences in the field of bulk purification of specific proteins in a cascade process for plasma protein purification.

March 2007

Prolias announces the issuance of US Patent 7, 217, 507, Methods for Detecting Ligands and Targets in a Mixture. The patent issued March 2007, with a priority date of April 14, 2003. This patent covers the Bead Blot technology platform that is used for, among other applications, identifying ligands to proteins, in addition to applications that cover is the first patent to issue of the Prolias technology.

March 2007

Prolias' proprietary FIoNA technology for identifying valuable proteins is published in Analytical Biochemistry (Sarkar et al, (2007) 365:91-102). The technology promises to change the paradigm for drug discovery from evaluating proteins one at a time to evaluating all the proteins in a complex mixture simultaneously for a desired function, and rapidly proceeding to the identification of the active proteins, thereby ensuring at inception that the lead has the relevant function.

January 2007

Prolias' proprietary intellectual property for selectively capturing valuable proteins from highly complex and impure mixtures is published in Analytical Biochemistry (Lathrop et al (2007) 361:65-76). This technology has already provided ligands for the removal of pathogenic proteins and viruses present in blood in minute amounts and for the recovery of proteins of therapeutic value.

December 2006

For the first time, results indicate that it is possible to use a filter to remove infectivty associated with prion proteins from the blood of infected animals. PRDT (a joint venture between ProMetic Life Sciences and the American Red Cross) published its findings in Lancet (2006), 368: 226-2230. Ligands that bind and remove infectivity from blood were identified using Prolias proprietary technology (Bead blot).

September 2006

A device using Prolias technology licensed to PRDT received the CE Marking (EU equivalent of FDA safety approval) for a medical device, class 2B, to reduce the amount of vCJD from blood.

It is currently being developed with the Prion Removal Working Group of the UK National Blood Service as a safeguard against mad cow disease for the UK blood supply.