Protagen granted Notice of Allowance in Japan for key method patent for identifying and selecting clones

Protagen AG, a specialist for in-vitro diagnostics and GMP-compliant protein analysis, announced today that it received a Notice of Allowance by the Japanese Patent Office stating a favourable decision for the patent application 2000-547262 developed at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany. This patent claims broadly a method for identifying and selecting clones relating to the basic UNIclone® technology and is already granted in Europe with the publication number EP1073770 B1.

Protagen is the exclusive licensee of the Max-Planck Society to commercialize the UNIclone® technology platform which serves the needs of modern proteomic analysis, to support in-vitro and companion diagnostic R&D projects (UNIarray®), and to provide antibody profiling tools (UNIchip®) for faster selection of therapeutic antibodies. One of the world largest selection of human recombinant proteins expressed in E.coli represents more than 10,000 human genes, and is in the possession of Protagen. For the full exploitation of this unique platform, Protagen has developed a proprietary high-throughput workflow for production and application of protein microarrays.

"This notice of allowance further strengthens our leading position in the area of protein arrays and diagnostic marker discovery in general. In particular, it supports our leading position in the determination of indication-specific autoantibody patterns for the development of novel serum based in-vitro diagnostics", underscores Dr. Stefan Müllner, Chief Executive Officer of Protagen.

The technology is currently successfully used in the internal research and development programs for early detection and diagnosis of cancer, auto-immune and neurological diseases as well as in cooperation with biopharmaceutical companies worldwide.