Corning Awarded Additional Patent for Label-free Drug Development Technology

Corning Incorporated has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued the company an additional patent related to the Corning® Epic® System that deals with the study of unpurified biological samples with label-free biosensor technology.

This advanced discovery will enable researchers to study the interactions between drug targets and more biologically relevant samples such as cell supernatants and cell lysates. It will also help to improve overall data quality and reduce the time and expense associated with identifying and labeling drug targets, the company says.

The study of molecular interactions in high-throughput screening has become an essential part of the drug discovery process. Many conventional screening methods require highly purified molecules as well as complex labeling methods, both of which can compromise the biological relevance of the interactions being studied.

Applications such as hybridoma screening and cell lysates require the ability to detect biomolecular interactions in complex samples. “The ability of the Corning Epic System to screen complex samples such as cell lysates and supernatants in drug discovery represents a significant step forward in rapidly identifying novel and biologically relevant interactions,” said Mannix Aklian, commercial development manager and the Corning inventor responsible for this new patent.

This latest patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,349,080 entitled “Label-independent Detection of Unpurified Analytes,” adds to Corning’s extensive patent portfolio related to the Epic System and label-free, optical biosensor technology. Previously, Corning acquired exclusive rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,738,825, a fundamental patent related to optical-based biosensors in a microplate format.

“We are committed to enabling our customers to realize the great potential of label-free technology in drug discovery and beyond,” said Ron Verkleeren, Epic business director, Corning Incorporated.

Corning’s Epic system is the world’s first high-throughput, label-free screening system. It uses patented optical biosensor technology to enable the study of a broad range of biochemical and cell-based targets.