BellBrook Labs Accelerates Product Development through Federal Grants and In-licensing
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BellBrook Labs was awarded two federal grant awards totaling $800,000 for further development of their proprietary Transcreener™ high throughput screening platform.
A Phase II SBIR grant was awarded by the National Cancer Institute for improvements and extensions of the company's top selling product, the Transcreener™ KINASE Assay, which is on pace to surpass revenue projections within the first year of launch.
A Phase I SBIR grant was awarded by the National Institute of Neurodegenerative Disorders and Stroke for extension of the Transcreener™ platform into a new family of drug targets, namely methyltransferases.
Inhibition of specific methyltransferases with small molecule drugs is thought to be an underutilized strategy for treatment of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
The planned Bellbrook assays will accelerate identification and optimization of selective drugs targeting methyltransferases.
Improvements to the Transcreener™ KINASE Assay funded by the grant from NCI will include formatting the assay for another detection mode in order to broaden its market appeal.
To accelerate these efforts, BellBrook recently signed an agreement with Invitrogen Corporation, to license their LanthaScreen detection reagents.
Bob Lowery, BellBrook's president and CEO explained, "Providing an assay in different detection formats is essentially meeting customers' preferences for different flavors."
"The first generation Transcreener™ KINASE Assay incorporated one of the two predominant detection formats used in HTS."
"Licensing LanthaScreen from Invitrogen allows us to convert Transcreener™ to the other major format using reagents that have already been extensively validated in the market place."
