Company offers proprietary technology to target, capture, and isolate proteins based on their functionality.
Berlin-based Caprotec bioanalytics opened a U.S. subsidiary in Burlington, MA. The U.S. business will be responsible for North American sales, marketing, and support for the company’s Capture Compound Mass Spectrometry (CCMS) technology and related products.
Christian Jurinke, Ph.D., Caprotec’s head of product commercialization and distribution, has been appointed president of the new U.S. subsidiary. The business is also partnering with Genovative Solutions to help boost sales of CCMS products and services in North America.
The CCMS technology has been developed to target, capture, and isolate selected proteins, including membrane proteins, out of any complex biological sample, based on their functionality.
The approach uses synthetic Capture Compound molecules to interrogate native proteins, including lipophilic membrane proteins, in virtually any biological sample. Caprotec is commercializing CCMS through preconfigured caproKits™, and through contract services based on already available Capture Compounds. The company also works in collaboration with companies and researchers in areas including drug interaction protein profiling, drug target identification, and evaluating drug mode of action and off-target side effects.
The first two caproKits, SAH caproKit, and cAMP caproKit, were launched in January. CaproKits are currently available for protein kinases, cAMP- and cGMP-binding proteins, methyl transferases, and metalloproteases. New kits are also constantly being developed.
The CCMS process can be described as a homogeneous reverse high-throughput screening, Caprotec explains. In essence, the proteome is treated as a library and screened for individual proteins that interact with the highly selective Capture Compounds. The features of CCMS hinge on the multifunctionality of these synthetic Capture Compound molecules. Not only do Capture Compounds function selectively, e.g., for an enzyme substrate/inhibitor, a co-factor or drug candidate), but they also have a reactivity function, to covalently bind the protein target. A sorting function then pulls the Capture Compound-protein-complex directly out of cell lysates.
