Allele Custom Services for Drug Screening Companies

Many target discovery and validation programs can benefit from RNA interference, fluorescent proteins, stem cells, and viral delivery systems. However, applications of these technologies require special reagents and laboratory know-how. Even when available, many generic reagent kits are not tailored for your particular needs in screening or validation.

At Allele, we accelerate your discovery efforts with custom RNAi screening, fluorescence based assays, and cell model development services.

1) Our RNAi platform, based on our patented shRNA/miRNA technologies, use DNA linear template, plasmid, lentivirus, retrovirus, or baculovirus vectors that prompt cells to endogenously express RNAi. As a result, our screens offer advantages over synthetic siRNAs:
• Higher levels of consistency
• Greater delivery and gene silencing efficiencies
• Accessibility to difficult-to-transfect cells, including primary cells
• Potential for inducible RNAi expression
• More persistent silencing with shRNA under Allele’s own IP–you may not need to license siRNA patents!

2) Fluorescent proteins (FPs), which can span the entire visual spectrum, have become some of the most widely used genetically encoded tags. Genes encoding FPs alone or as fusions to a protein of interest may be introduced to cells by a number of different methods, including simple plasmid transfection or viral transduction. Allele Biotech is one of a few companies that develop and improve FPs through fundamental research. We have so far achieved:
• The brightest cyan and green FPs, true monomers for minimum artifact or cytotoxicity
• The brightest yellow and red FPs from lancelet, only FPs from vertebrate
• mTFP1 as the best FRET donor by 3 independent reports
• Photoconvertible FPs for super imaging or kinetic labeling
• Delivery on plasmid, retrovirus, lentivirus, baculovirus vectors

3) As a major advancement in the stem cell field, it has recently been shown that mouse and human differentiated cells may be reprogrammed into stem-like, pluripotent cells by the introduction of defined transcription factors. These induced stem cells (iPSCs) provide unprecedented resources of cells of different differentiation stages for functional testing and drug screening. Allele Biotech develops and provides state-of-the-art reagents in convenient forms for iPSC production
• iPS factors carried on lentivirus, retrovirus, baculovirus for different cell types
• Availability in combination with fluorescent proteins under own IP, and drug resistant genes
• 4-in-1 or 2-in-1 effective use of iPS factors on one viral vector
• Feeder cells of human origin expressing factors essential for stem cell culturing

4) Introduction of protein factors, miRNA, promoter-reporter, and virtually any other genetic element of interest via the most efficient viral packaging systems.
• Introducing protein-FP fusion, promoter-FP reporter, photoactivatable factors for cell-based assays
• Introducing critical factors for cell immortalization
• Episomal or integrated expression using baculoviral vectors
• High throughput, systematic expression of whole class of molecules in any type of cell
• High titer viral packaging at low cost for delivery to animal tissues

In addition, the Allele team can provide custom-designed assays that can be used for assaying enzyme activities in almost any pathway, such as the EGF pathway, TNF response/apoptosis pathway, nuclear receptors, etc. We utilize technically advanced methods to provide our partners with advantages over alternative methods or other services.

New Product of the Week 06-28-10 to 07-03-10: Eco-friendly mammalian tissue culture plates, 40% less plastic to the environment, 40% less cost to your budget, contact our sales rep today for quotes and details.

Promotion of the Week 06-28-10 to 07-03-10: Oct3/4 iPS lentivirus with RFP as marker, new to the market, this week only all kits containing Oct3/4-RFP same price as the original, non-RFP versions, save ~$50!

Tags: cell assays, cell based assays, cell culture, drug screening, FP assays, FRET, iPS cells, kinase assasy, pathway, RNAi

Developing Cell-Based Assays

Cascaded protein interactions form the foundation of all signaling pathways, many of which are involved in multiple human diseases. These interactions are sensitively and precisely regulated by various post-translation modifications such as phosphorylation, acetylation, ubiquitination, etc. Many action points of the protein modifications have been targeted during drug development. From a survey we have conducted on assays aimed at these targets, we found that most of the assays are based on the enzymatic reactions, e.g. phosphorylation-specific ELISA, and chemically modified FRET, which require pre-assembled reagent kits which are hard to apply to different targets and different cell models.

Fluorescent Protein based FRET might be the optimal choice to develop a versatile cell-based assay. Since signaling pathways rely on hierarchical protein-protein interactions, the most direct and precise way to study cell signaling pathways would be to detect the interactions between a target protein and its immediate downstream protein. Furthermore, different upstream signals can activate the same set of target proteins in different post-modification patterns, resulting in specific activation of downstream responding factors. These signal flows may be individually monitored by using FRET based assay redesigned and validated for each downstream pathway.

Allele’s scientists can develop cell-based assays with in-depth understanding of protein interactions within the context of human genome, such as the SH2, SH3 and PTB domains in tyrosine kinase signaling, the F-box, BTB-box, SOCS, WDR, and LRR domains in the ubiquitin proteasome system, etc. Additionally, Allele’s cell-based assays can be carried on world’s most powerful lentivirus packaging platform, suitable for virtually all different cell lines and primary cells.

New Product of the Week 061410 to 062010: Rat monoclonal antibody against GFP, strong signal for GFP labeling

Promotion of the Week 061410 to 062010: Mouse LIF-bFGF expressing feeder cells for stem cell culture (ABP-SC-BLIFM05), one vial free to go with any iPS lentivirus/retrovirus kit.

Tags: BTB-box, cell based assays, F-box, FRET, LRR domain, pathway, signaling pathway, SOCS, WDR domain