Epitome to Develop Multiplex Assay Reagents for EMD

Epitome Biosystems has announced that it has signed a licensing and development agreement with EMD Biosciences for products based on Epitome's proprietary EpiTag™ technology.

Epitome will develop reagents for the quantitative measurement of key intracellular signaling proteins.

The companies will collaborate on development and the products will be marketed and sold for research applications on a world-wide basis by EMD Biosciences under its well-known Novagen® and Calbiochem® brands.

Epitome will receive a technology access fee, milestone-based development payments, and royalties on product sales.

Epitome's EpiTag technology is designed to enable the identification of amino acid sequences or "tags" within a protein.

Antibodies raised against peptides containing the tags, rather than the entire protein, have predetermined specificity and high affinity.

Similarly, measurement in an EpiTag assay is made on the peptide fragment, released from the protein by digestion, rather than on the entire protein.

By reducing the measurement system to a peptide level, Epitome provides a universal, efficient and scalable method for developing and conducting multiplex protein assays.

Neal Gordon, Ph.D., President of Epitome stated, "We are extremely pleased to have a company with the reputation of EMD Biosciences become one of our early technology adopters.”

“They have an outstanding history of innovation and we are looking forward to helping them expand their product line."

"The EpiTag system is a simple yet powerful approach to develop robust multiplex immunoassays," said Robert Mierendorf, Ph.D., CTO of EMD Biosciences.

"We are excited about partnering with Epitome Biosystems to develop unique tools for the study of cell signaling pathways," he continued.