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news.Geneart, a provider for DNA engineering and processing services, has received a patent from European patent office for a new screening system based on synthesized virus-like reporter genes with which a new class of antiviral drug candidates may be identified.
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The awarding of the patent thus allows to analyze by high-throughput processes to which extent such drug candidates block the export of viral messenger RNA from the cell nucleus and therefore suppress virus propagation. Additionally, this process may be used for identification of DNA motives positively affecting production rates of cell factories and therefore production costs of proteins.
The patent covers Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Liechtenstein, France, the UK, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Germany. The German patent of this family of patents had been granted as early as 2008. An application for a comparable protection for North America has been filed under the international patent process.
Ralf Wagner, CEO of Geneart, said: With being granted the European patent, we did not only protect a process with which new antiviral active agents can be identified based on optimized genes, now we also have another proprietary technology available, beside our gene optimizing software GeneOptimizer, to systematically improve production efficiency of protein-based therapeutics and vaccines.
This emphasizes again our exceptional position as development partner for the pharmaceutical industry as well as the innovative potential of synthetic genes for research.