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Pittsburgh, PA -
October 1, 2004 - Automated Cell announces its first antibody lead from its
antibody discovery program in melanoma. Working with Stage IV melanoma cancer
survivors, Automated Cell has isolated an antibody from the plasma of these
patients that kills melanoma cells in vitro. Lex Cowsert, Ph.D., Automated
Cell’s Chief Scientific Officer, said “we shall continue to develop the
cancer biology of this particular lead, but in the meantime, we have
validated our target-independent discovery platform and will now scale up
significantly our primary screening throughput over the upcoming months.” Automated Cell’s discovery
platform relies on a high throughput, function-based approach to the
identification of therapeutically relevant antibodies from patient plasma
using a bead-based, epitope-specific approach. Antibodies from the plasma are
fractionated onto beads and bound to the bead in an epitope-specific manner.
The beads are then directly assayed using Automated Cell’s functional biology
platform, which can screen millions of beads per month. Beads that cause
apoptosis, cytostasis or that inhibit anchorage independent growth in living
human cancer cells are then sequenced and scaled up. Scaled up beads are used
to affinity purify the antibody found in the plasma for further
characterization and target identification. Automated Cell’s functional
biology platform uses fluorescent and visual imaging to screen millions of
beads each month against these antibody functional assays. To generate
revenue for its drug discovery programs, Automated Cell has successfully
partnered with major biotech companies in antibody discovery to utilize its
functional biology imaging platform for screening of their partners’ antibody
libraries to identify and further characterize potential antibody
therapeutics. Automated Cell, Inc. is a
target-independent drug discovery company focused on the development of
antibody therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of oncology. We are
building an oncology drug pipeline and will develop new therapeutic
candidates for ourselves and in partnership with pharmaceutical and
biotechnology collaborators. For more information, please contact: Kevin Sullivan, VP Business
Development at 412-826-5203 or ksullivan@automatedcell.com. Copyright © 2004, Automated Cell, Inc. |
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