LOUISVILLE, Ky. -
June 14, 2013 -
PRLog -- Geneva, Switzerland, Louisville, KY – June 14, 2013 –
Atheris Laboratories (Geneva, Switzerland)
and
Peptides International, Inc. (Louisville, KY, USA) are pleased to announce the launch of synthetic venom libraries under the brand delta-melusine™
.
Some 200,000 venomous animal species are each known to produce hundreds of potent and selective venomous bioactive peptides. “This natural resource represents one of the richest sources of naturally tailored drug candidates, mainly disulfide-rich peptides”, states Dr. Michael Pennington, President and CEO of Peptides International. Even if only the tip of the iceberg has been explored, venom bioactives have already resulted in 6 registered and marketed drugs. However, most animals are too rare or too small to be investigated, and many components are present in tiny amounts only, thus almost impossible to detect. “This is exactly what has pushed us to pioneer alternative routes in the drug discovery process, making the best use of shotgun venom proteomic and NextGen venom gland transcriptomic sequencing” explains Dr. Reto Stöcklin, President and CEO of Atheris laboratories. He further states: “We have developed proprietary bioinformatic tools to exploit these massive sets of data and established a state-of-the-
art multiplex peptide synthesis platform to produce hundreds of peptides in parallel, which are desalted, refolded and dispensed in microplates for medium to high-throughput bioactivity screening”. “We believe this new concept will open unexplored avenues and deliver original lead compounds to address major health problems and design tomorrow’s drugs”, concludes Dr. Pennington. The delta-melusine™
libraries already contain thousands of peptides and mini-proteins clustered into structural families such as Protoxin/Huwentoxin, alpha-KTx scorpion toxins, antimicrobial peptides, defensins, cell-penetrating peptides, alpha-, kappa-, mu- or omega-conotoxins and enzyme inhibitors. The collections cover public domain sequences, proprietary natural sequences and unique sequences, designed in-house using Atheris’s proprietary Reverse-Discovery™
algorithms.
delta-melusine™
is manufactured by Atheris and distributed exclusively in USA and Canada by Peptides International.
Atheris Laboratories (atheris.com)
is a dynamic, family-owned and family-driven Swiss biotech company founded by Dr. Reto Stöcklin in 1995. Atheris is a contract research organization (CRO) specialized in peptide and protein drug discovery, peptidomics, bioinformatics, NextGen RNA/DNA sequencing and metabolic studies. Having pioneered venomics, the company has established itself as a world leader venom-based drug discovery and is committed to provide innovative services and products to the life sciences community. Under the brand name, Melusine®, Atheris has the world’s largest collection of venoms and makes them available as pre-treated (alpha-melusine)
and pre-fractionated (beta-melusine)
libraries of natural venoms, virtual venoms (gamma-melusine)
with databases and specialized bioinformatic tools and now developed unique collections of synthetic venoms (delta-melusine™)
. Atheris is the partner of choice for drug discovery and lead optimization for venom-derived bioactives.
Contact:Dr. Estelle Bianchi, Head of Business Development
Atheris Laboratories
Case postale 314, CH-1233 Bernex-Geneva, Switzerland
Phone: +41 22 850 05 85 l Fax: +41 22 850 05 86
Email:
contact@atheris.com · Websites:
www.atheris.com;
www.melusine.comPeptides International Inc. (pepnet.com)
has its headquarters in Louisville, KY and specializes in manufacturing and distributing high purity, biologically active peptides, enzyme substrates & inhibitors, innovative polymers, research chemicals for peptide synthesis and custom synthesis services to major biotech, pharmaceutical and academic institutions throughout the world. The product portfolio around disulfide-rich peptides and toxins is one of the most extensive in the world.
Contact:Robert Brousseau, Director of Corporate Communications
Peptides International, Inc.
11621 Electron Drive Louisville, Kentucky 40299 USA
Phone: 502-266-
8787 · Fax: 502-267-
1329
E-mail:
peptides@pepnet.com · Website:
www.pepnet.com
Account Phone Number