IonGate Biosciences GmbH - ARTEL and IonGate Join Forces to Advance Drug Discovery Research in North America

Westbrook, ME (USA), Frankfurt / Main (Germany), 24th June, 2008. ARTEL and IonGate Biosciences appear their cardinal affiliation to abutment the growing appliance of IonGate’s biologic analysis technology. The German biotechnology aggregation will advantage ARTEL’s bounded infrastructure, chump relationships and bazaar ability to access the acknowledgment and use of its analysis systems and appraisal development casework in North America. The affiliation will focus on IonGate’s SURFE2R Technology, which enables added able analysis involving biologic targets such as film transporters and ligand-gated ion channels.

Membrane carriage proteins play an important role in abundant biological functions, and accept been affiliated to cardiac, neurologic and metabolic disorders, yet they represent a almost adopted articulation of the biologic analysis market. The antecedent abridgement of technology for able agent screening has led biologic companies to focus the majority of their analysis initiatives on added targets. Ligand-gated ion approach proteins, while added frequently targeted, about are aswell accountable to less-than-optimal screening methods. IonGate’s SURFE2R (SURFace Electrogenic Event Reader) Technology represents a cogent advanced against added able screening of transporters as able-bodied as ligand-gated ion channels.

“Transporter-focused biologic analysis initiatives are assertive for accelerated advance worldwide, and the U.S. appeal for our SURFE2R Technology is rising,” said Dr. Thiemo Gropp Ph.D., Managing Director, IonGate Biosciences GmbH. “With ARTEL’s abutment and bazaar expertise, we will be able to bear the aforementioned alone abutment to our barter in North America as we bear to our barter in Europe.”

“We chose ARTEL because of the company’s able relationships with biopharmaceutical companies, awful accomplished staff, and abysmal compassionate of our customers’ needs,” said Wolfgang Lerch, President, IonGate Biosciences Inc. “Our companies’ accessory cultures and able customer-focused orientations will acquiesce us to accompany an unparalleled aggregate of accomplished account and technology to the biologic analysis industry.”
“IonGate and ARTEL allotment a adherence to high-quality technology and above chump service. We’re aflame to be alive with a apple chic aggregation with such cutting-edge technology,” said Kirby Pilcher, President, ARTEL.

IonGate’s systems are able accoutrement for advisers in ample biologic companies as able-bodied as bookish environments. The systems are admired for amount axiological testing, early-stage screening, ADME studies, etc., and are able to accommodated the appropriate throughput. A “label-free” method, SURFE2R provides altitude assays which are added functionally relevant, and appropriately of college value, for a growing arrangement of protein targets. The affection of this technology is an electrode biochip which measures the electrical action of membrane-bound proteins. This action is empiric through altitude of the capacitive charging of the sensor cavity by ionic breed as they are actively transported above the film by the protein targets of interest.

Wolfgang Lerch
Managing Director
IonGate Biosciences GmbH
Industriepark Hoechst / Building D528
65926 Frankfurt/Main
Germany
phone+49.69.305.85 400
fax +49.69.305.85 444
email info@iongate.net

Media inquiries
Dr. Holger Bengs
Biotech Consulting

phone +49.69.619.94 273
fax +49.69.619.94 249
email info@holgerbengs.de

IonGate Biosciences develops, produces and markets avant-garde screening technologies to investigate transporters and is the common baton in this new area.

Transporters are capital for the metabolic functions of the cell, advice processing in the absolute organism, and play a axiological role in the bloom of humans. Due to their difficult beginning accessibility, transporters are underrepresented in accepted biologic screening processes. Now, IonGate’s aboriginal product, SURFE2R One, is abutting by the SURFE2R Workstation 500 to accommodate awful absolute anatomic screening of transporters in the higher-throughput biologic analysis and development environments. IonGate provides absolute arrangement solutions, encompassing disposables and reagents, consulting casework which cover the architecture of assays and customized applications, and arrangement class services.

IonGate Biosciences GmbH is a adventure basic financed biotechnology aggregation amid in Frankfurt/Main, Germany and Portland, Maine, USA. In accession to the capital financier and arch accomplice Heidelberg Innovation, the KfW holds a pale in IonGate. The aggregation was accustomed in 2000 and currently employs added than 30 staff.