PLSG Invests $100,000 in Proteopure to Speed up Protein Research

Dr. Doros Platika, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) has announced PLSG has invested $100,000 in Proteopure, a spinout of Carnegie Mellon University and founded by LaunchCyte.

Proteopure is developing technology to improve the methodology for isolating and reproducing proteins in medical research. The PLSG investment is provided under its Technology Development Fund (TDF) program.

"Proteopure is working to relieve bottlenecks in biomedical progress by giving researchers novel protein purification products," said Rich Ekstrom, Chief Executive Officer of Proteopure.

"Our technology is conceptually very simple, but it is different than all of the competitive products and eliminates a major problem for researchers. There has been an unmet need for a universal sample preparation methodology."

"We believe Proteopure addresses this by providing the first universal method for isolating proteins. This will decrease the time spent on optimizing protein isolation protocols."

The technology involves a molecule that reversibly binds all proteins. At the heart of the Proteopure 2DE sample preparation Kit is a "spin column," an apparatus that can be used in a standard laboratory centrifuge.

The spin column is packed with a resin that binds proteins via interaction with the proprietary protein-capture molecule.

Contaminants are washed away while proteins are immobilized on the resin. Initial commercial availability of the product is expected in 2006.