Why Allele?

Allele provides you with tools that you will find very helpful.  The two main motives for Allele developed products are:
1) To incorporate the most advanced technologies in the field
2) To provide equal utility as other companies’ equivalent products at a much more reasonable cost.

How did we do it?        By developing technologies internally, in most cases with government grant funding, by in-licensing others’ discoveries, and by listening to you, our customers.

What else do we do?      Conduct basic curiosity-driven research just like most of our customers. It helps to stay on the edge and connect to the community.

Tags: Allele, Allele Biotech, biomedical research, cost effectiveness, cost efficiency, DNA, Fluorescent proteins, iPS, low cost, Protein, reagents, RNAi, viruses

Allele Mail Bag: Our discovery that stem cells and other cells can be non-invasively intranasally delivered to the brain.

A few words from the blog editor:  The Allele Mail Bag is a new feature we initiated here by this post on July 20, 2009.  We like to post some of the messages that our research, business development, or customer service staff receives through Allele’s published email boxes, e.g. oligo@allelebiotech.com (for ordering any product or service), iPS@allelebiotech.com, RNAi@allelebiotech.com, FP@allelebiotech.com, Vivec@allelebiotech.com (for consulting with Allele experts on each of the focus product group. FP: fluorescent proteins.  Vivec: viral vectors).  If we find your message to be suitable as a guest post on our blog, we will ask for your permission first.

In addition to any questions about any product, service, or R&D activity that Allele may provide or perform, we also encourage you to use our communication and social networking channels to help more people become aware of your own research progress.  After all, it is by the same principle of scientific information exchange through traditional channels such as publication in journals or presentation at meetings—the better we communicate the more science benefits.

Excerpt from a recent email to iPS@allelebiotech.com, with permission from Dr. Frey:

“Hi,
I am excited to tell you that along with my collaborators in Germany, especially Lusine Danielyan MD, I have discovered that stem cells and other therapeutic cells can be non-invasively delivered to the brain using the intranasal delivery method that I developed.  The first of our papers on this new discovery was just published in European Journal of Cell Biology.  I have attached a copy of this paper.  I am hopeful that this    breakthrough, that could revolutionize the stem cell industry and make stem    cell treatments practical by eliminating the need for invasive neurosurgical implantation of cells, can facilitate the development of stem cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, traumatic brain injury and many other brain disorders.

Best Regards,
—
William H. Frey II, Ph.D., Director
Alzheimer’s Research Center
Regions Hospital
640 Jackson St.
St. Paul, MN 55101
Professor of Pharmaceutics, Neurology
and Neuroscience
University of Minnesota”

Tags: Alzheimer, brain research, cutting edge research, iPS, iPS retroviral gene delivery, lentiviral iPS vectors, neurosurgical implantation, new discovery, non-invasive delivery, Parkinson's disease, stem cells, stroke

Allele Biotech’s Box Swap Program

Allele Biotech has a special, money saving offer for you if are located in any of the following San Diego zip codes:

92014
92037
92111
92117
92120
92121
92122
92129
92130
92145

Allele Biotech’s Box Swap Program will give you cash or credit for good condition styrofoam boxes that are greater than 9 x 9 x 9 inches. Our goal is to help eliminate waste while saving you money by reusing your accumulating, unwanted styrofoam boxes. If you are located in any of the previously mentioned zip codes, give us a call and we will come to your facility at remove the unwanted boxes at no charge!

We are encouraging all types of companies to take part in this endeavor. If you are a biotech company or a loyal Allele customer you may redeem your syrofoam for credit that can be applied toward any Allele Biotech order. If you are a company that has no need for biological research reagents then you may redeem your boxes for cash!

Everyone wins with Allele’s Box Swap Program. So free up some space, eliminate waste, and earn money all with just one phone call! 858-587-6645

Tags: Allele product credit, business, business symbiosis, cash for boxes, eliminate waste, environmentally conscious business, green business, recycling, save money, styrofoam boxes

Our Message to Allele’s Followers

What we at Allele Biotech see ourselves doing in the sense of fulfilling an obligation to the society and our peers in scientific research: Salvation and success through innovation and diligence, reaching for a place of efficient sustainability where monopolies do not win and ordinary people have the chance to realize their dreams.

We don’t believe in dominance by a few big boys, because we don’t believe that they can provide researchers with the best value. We want people that deal with us to see that there is room for development by an individual or a small group of highly dedicated and talented persons, as your own group in academia or a small company can do. This is the beauty of our industry and our field.

We like to see our people challenge existing doctrine and hypothesize new ones, after all, isn‘t that how we are trained through grad school and postdoc training, but somehow and somewhere it starts to seem to difficult to do, especially when you try to get a paper accepted or a grant rated among the top 10%. We don’t want to lose our edge, even if we have to learn to better place it. We will continue to move this way, and we want you to come along for the ride.

Tags: aims, Allele, Allele Biotech, allelebiotech, career development, competition, goals, integrity, mission statement, narrative, research ethids, success, target

Time to renew the SBIR law and the fight is on again.

The following information is courtesy of Rick Shindell
at SBIR Gateway, we post this excerpt to here to help more people who may be concerned to become aware of the situation.

The four House bills were marked up and approved on June 11, 2009 by the House Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology and should go to the full SBC committee next week. The Senate bill is scheduled for markup June 18, 2009.

SENATE SBIR/STTR REAUTHORIZATION BILL S.1233 The Senate’s SBIR reauthorization bill was introduced June 10, 2009 and sponsored by SBE committee chair, Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and ranking member Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

At the time of this writing the bill was not yet available from the government printing office, so we can’t give you a link to it. We can provide you with an overview. It is close to but not exactly the same as last year.

Important points include:
* Extension of termination dates – 2023 (14 years)
* Improvements to strengthening the SBA Office of Technology
* Increase SBIR allocation by 0.1% per year (starting in FY-2011) until reaching 3.5% in FY-2020
* Increase STTR allocation to .4% for FY-2011; .5% for FY-2013; 0.6% for FY-2015
* Increase SBIR/STTR award levels to $150k phase I and $1M for phase II
* Awards shall not exceed 50% above recommended award levels
* Elimination of Phase II “invitation” process (i.e., DoD)
* VC small biz eligibility compromise limited to 18% of NIH SBIR Award funding, 8% at the other 10 agencies
* Allow small business to partner with federal labs or FFRDC without requiring a wavier from SBA
* Reinstate State and Rural outreach programs
* SBIR STEM Workforce Development Grant Pilot Program
* Continuation of Commercialization Pilot Program (DoD)
* Establish Commercialization Pilot Program for civilian agencies
* Nanotechnology Initiative
* Accelerating Cures – NIH Pilot
* Accuracy In Funding Base Calculations (keep em honest in the 2.5% extramural calculations)
* Increase in technical assistance from $4k to $5k
* SBIR and STTR Special Acquisition Preference

It is highly recommended that if you like the basis of this bill, contact your Senators and ask them to cosponsor this legislation, (S.1233 – A bill to reauthorize and improve the SBIR and STTR programs and for other purposes). This is very important if you want the Senate version to stand a chance on passing.

A tidbit you might have already known, the Challenge Grant through NIH’s ARRA stimulus program received 20k applications for some 200 to 400 awards.

The NIH stimulus grants do not have the SBIR obligations by a last minute change. How may all these affect Allele’s operations? We have submitted 3 grants to the NIH in the last 3 months, with total 4 now pending. It means that we sure are interested in NIH funding, which was, after all, how our company was started. On the other hand, we are also glad that we do have ongoing sales and services that link us directly to users of our technologies. In the current difficult economy and tight funding environment, we strive to be a company that supplies most essential biological research tools that could save average labs some 20-50% cost per item compared to buying from companies like Life Technologies and Clontech, etc. At the same time, we want to provide the convenience to our customers by covering a sufficient number of common reagent areas, a value small specialty companies normally do not offer. See our next blog for more comments on being a flexible and able provider of everything essential.

Tags: ARRA, GO grant, lab budget, lower costs, NIH challenge grant, NIH funding, research grants, research tools, SBIR