Allele Biotech Pre-Announces its Product Line in iPSC Creation Using Baculoviral Vectors

As a new approach of establishing novel product lines and generating feedbacks and potential interests early on, Allele Biotech has started disclosing its intended/ongoing research plan on AlleleBlogs or through AlleleNews. This week, Allele Biotech has listed the main points that it intends to accomplish by developing a baculovirus-based iPS cell generating system to complement its existing lentiviral and retroviral vector systems for iPSCs. The plan was part of a grant proposal presented to the NIH during the stimulus grant rounds in mid-2009. There has also been interest on relevant service from Allele Biotech’s customers. The time for market launch is expected to be by the end of this year.

Allele Biotech R&D team welcomes any suggestions and discussions on the research plan and the resulting products. Comments can be made at the blog, through comments on this news, or directly to us through emails.

Allele Introduces New Version of BVES with Insect Specific IRES

Internal ribosome entry site (IRES) can be used to initiate translation of a second open reading frame (ORF) of an mRNA, providing the benefits of: 1) avoiding promoter competition in a dual promoter situation; 2) having controlled ratio of expression of two proteins; 3) placing a dominant selection pressure on the entire bicistronic mRNA and hence the maintenance of the transgene when a selection marker is placed as the second ORF.

IRES elements are located mainly in RNA viruses except certain mammalian and insect mRNA molecules. Only one DNA virus has so far been found to contain an IRES, the while spot syndrome virus (WSSV) of marine shrimp. This IRES, compared to a very few other choices known to function in insect cells such as the IRES from Rhopalosiphum padi virus (RhPV), has strong translation initiation activity (~98-99% in reference to cap-dependent initiation), insect cell specificity, and encompasses only 180 base pairs.

Allele Biotech, with its acquisition of Orbigen, is a major provider of BVES products and services with more than 10 years of experience. Allele’s featured New Products of the Week* this week are WSSV IRES containing baculovirus vectors, the sIRES (for Strong IRES from Shrimp virus) series plasmids. Currently one version is pOrb-MCS-sIRES-VSVG for pseudotyping baculoviruses (within the Emerald Baculovirus for Mammalian Expression series), with pOrb-mWasabi-sIRES-VSVG as a fluorescent protein control; the other is pOrb-MCS-sIRES-MCS for cloning a custom second cDNA. New versions in the future will include IRES driven mWasabi and other commonly used selection markers.

With a current research project for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) involving development of modified BVES and mammalian protein expression and purification systems, Allele Biotech expects this product line to continue its expansion at a fast pace.

* Allele Biotech announces at least one new product every Wednesday through news release at AlleleNews or Allele Blog and social networks.

Allele Biotech Receives Funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to Produce Cancer Antigens

Cancer formation is a heterogeneous and complex process, involving many factors and cellular signaling pathways. There are more than 1,200 potential cancer biomarkers identified in the literature by a 2006 review, which, if analyzed in multiplexicity, may provide the best potential for reliable and early detection of cancer. Many proteins including most cancer antigens become post-translationally modified (PTM) during the “secretory process”, which involves of a journey from their site of synthesis in the rough endoplasmic reticulum (ER), through the Golgi apparatus and then to various cellular and extracellular destinations.

Examples of protein modifications include glycosylation, phosphorylation, acetylation, and amidation. Of these, the most complex procedure is glycosylation, involving several enzymes. There are increasing demands for these glycosylated human proteins in good quantity, purity and affordability by the scientific community to perform fundamental and clinical studies in relation to cancer. Such proteins can not be expressed in bacteria or yeast because those cells do not carry out equivalent PTM as in mammalian cells. Allele Biotech has chosen a modified baculovirus expression systems (MBVES) as the main method for producing glycoproteins and the proposal was chosen by the NCI for funding of $150,000, approximately 75% of the cost of producing 10 glycosylated cancer antigen proteins in the first phase of 6 months. The remaining funding of ~$50,000 mostly in indirect costs will be covered by Allele’s own funds. This SBIR contract will be partially subcontracted to the University of California , San Diego (UCSD) during the glycan analysis phase. The work will be performed in Allele’s San Diego facility and UCSD’s GlycoTechnology Core facility.


This news is released by Allele Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals, Inc. through AlleleNews, for in-between experiments