October 1, 2011 (Vol. 31, No. 17)
Assays and Technologies for Drug Research, Discovery, and Process
The emergence of HTS in the early 90s and the quest for better technologies to address the expanding chemical diversity spurred Cisbio, originally a diagnostics company, to diversify and hone its technological offering for the drug discovery market. Taking advantage of years of expertise in the field of immunoassay design and fluorescence methodologies applied to the life sciences, and supported by Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Lehn (1987), Cisbio Bioassays launched the first truly homogeneous fluorescence technology: HTRF®. Fifteen years later, HTRF products have become a must for molecular interaction investigation.
About the Company
Cisbio Bioassays is a global developer of technologies applied in assay development and drug screening procedures to enhance drug discovery.
Cisbio Bioassays pioneered the field of homogenous fluorescence methodologies via its proprietary technology, HTRF (homogenous time resolved fluorescence), a highly sensitive, robust technology for the detection of molecular interactions. The company has also partnered with a number of industrial experts and providers to create unique technology combinations: Lumi4®-Tb cryptate for the second generation of HTRF assays, KinEASE and Transcreener® for its kinase offering, SNAP-TAG® and HaloTag® for the optimization of its Tag-lite® platform, equipment companies for HTRF-compatible readers.
Committed to meeting the needs of its customers, Cisbio Bioassays also provides a range of services, including custom labeling of specific assay components, custom assay design and development, and HTRF technology training led by its skilled technical staff.
The company operates in most countries, serving life science customers involved in drug research. Headquartered in France, Cisbio Bioassays has operations in the U.S. (Bedford, MA), in China (Shanghai), and serves other customers worldwide through a network of highly qualified sales channels and partners in Japan, India, and PacRim. Cisbio Bioassays is a member of the Belgian group IBA.
Markets
Over the last 15 years, HTRF has been implemented by a large number of pharma companies, biotechs, CROs, and academic groups. Its high-throughput capabilities, its reliability, and its cost-efficiency have encouraged extensive application in small molecule screening.
HTRF-based assays have also been rapidly implemented in labs, such as those of therapeutic areas, where ease of use, rapid assay implementation, assay quality, and secure procurement are the primary criteria for selecting assays to be used over long time periods. This has naturally driven the expansion of Cisbio’s technologies and products upstream and downstream in HTS, from target validation through to lead optimization.
The emergence of biologics screening has spurred the validation of new technologies for the selection and the characterization of new NBEs, and there again, HTRF and Tag-lite have shown their potency in addressing multiple assay formats such as monoclonal antibody screening, affinity characterization, and also antibody quantification for downstream bioprocess operations.
Capabilities
HTRF is a robust and integrated technology platform that provides crucial benefits to Cisbio Bioassays’ drug research customers. HTRF can limit assay development time and helps create a homogenous assay format that is well-suited to evolving HTS needs. It can also substitute for tedious heterogeneous formats such as ELISAs. In addition, as a fully homogeneous technology, HTRF offers exceptional flexibility in terms of miniaturization from 96 to 384 or 1,536 well formats. Adapted to customer’s needs and equipment, it provides a very cost-effective assay platform.
Cisbio Bioassays has recognized the need to associate HTRF technology with cell-based formats and created a new generation of functional tools that can provide information about cell function in a high-throughput mode, including the Tag-lite technology for cell surface receptor investigation and screening. With these different approaches, Cisbio Bioassays offers a comprehensive technological platform enabling the implementation of a growing range of molecular interaction study tools, including:
- cell surface receptor investigation and more specifically GPCR (G-protein coupled receptors) study and screening, dimerization, ligand binding, and functional studies,
- kinase screening and profiling, specifically tyrosine/serine/threonine kinases,
- immunoassays, biomarker quantification, and metabolic readouts,
- enzymatic activity assessment,
- protein-protein interactions, and
- biologics screening and characterization, bioprocess tools.
Cisbio Bioassays’ expertise, product and service offering, covering bio-organic and protein chemistry, assay design, and large-scale manufacturing procedures, make our innovation-driven company a partner of choice for the success of its customers’ projects.
Cisbio Bioassays
Parc Marcel Boiteux
30200 Codolet, France
Phone +33 466 796 705
Website www.htrf.com
Date Founded 1985
Number of Employees 200
HTRF and Tag-lite are registered trademarks of Cisbio Bioassay. KinEASE is a trademark of EMD Millipore. Transcreener is a registered trademark of BellBrook Labs. SNAP-TAG is a registered trademark of New England Biolabs. HaloTag is a registered trademark of Promega. Lumi4 is a registered trademark of Lumiphore.
