- First-of-its-kind service determines potency and selectivity of compounds targeting ubiquitin pathway
- Accelerates drug discovery efforts previously hindered by complexity of ubiquitination cascade
- Misregulation of ubiquitin pathway linked to neurodegeneration, cancer, inflammation and muscle-wasting disorders
Billerica, MA—October 4, 2011—EMD Millipore, the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, today announced the addition of UbiquitinProfiler™ Services to their drug profiling portfolio which includes GPCRProfiler®, IonChannelProfiler™, PhosphataseProfiler™ and KinaseProfiler™. This new service determines the potency and selectivity of compounds targeting ubiquitin ligases, key enzymes in a pathway linked to many serious diseases. Through this service, compounds sent to EMD Millipore by researchers are assessed via a panel of validated assays for their ability to enhance or inhibit the ubiquitination pathway.
With a central role in trafficking proteins for degradation, the ubiquitin pathway is an attractive target for drug discovery efforts in many areas including neurodegeneration, cancer and inflammation. With hundreds of proteins involved, however, the complexity of the ubiquitin cascade has presented a formidable barrier to efficient drug discovery.
“With our UbiquitinProfiler™ Services, we are able to more rapidly and effectively assess how potential drug compounds impact the ubiquitin pathway,” notes Dr. Steve Davies, Director of Merck Millipore's Dundee site. “Previously, researchers had to develop and optimize all the necessary reagents and assays themselves. The time required to do this combined with the complexity of the ubiquitin cascade limited the ability to thoroughly evaluate the true impact and specificity of compounds.”
The UbiquitinProfiler™ Services originated with a custom project conducted for Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s main economic development agency, to create functional assays for various ubiquitin cascades for compound screening and selectivity profiling.
Eleanor Mitchell, director of Commercialization at Scottish Enterprise, said, "For EMD Millipore to now develop the intellectual property that it is licensing from us into its newest service, UbiquitinProfiler™, is great news. From our experience, companies that license our intellectual property are able to commercialize and bring it to market quickly, creating lucrative new revenue streams through innovative products and services built on cutting-edge technology.”
For more information on the new UbiquitinProfiler™ Services, please visit www.millipore.com/ubiquitinprofiler .
About EMD Millipore
EMD Millipore is the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Germany and offers a broad range of innovative, performance products, services and business relationships that enable our customers' success in research, development and production of biotech and pharmaceutical drug therapies. Through dedicated collaboration on new scientific and engineering insights, and as one of the top three R&D investors in the Life Science Tools industry, EMD Millipore serves as a strategic partner to customers and helps advance the promise of life science.
Headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, the division has around 10,000 employees, operations in 67 countries and 2010 revenues of $2.2 billion. EMD Millipore is known as Merck Millipore outside of the U.S. and Canada.
Note: Merck KGaA or Merck shall mean Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany