Cisbio Awarded $1.9 M Research Grant By France’s National Research Agency

Cisbio international has announced that it has been awarded a research and development grant by France’s National Research Agency (ANR).

The grant, totaling $1.9 million, will be used to fund the company’s Intracellular Molecular Imaging (IMI) project, one of 70 selected from 400 applications submitted to the ANR to receive research funding in the area of biology and healthcare technological innovation.

Cisbio’s IMI project aims to establish a technology compatible with high-throughput screening which will enable the quantification of biomolecular interactions in living cells, specifically targeting G-Protein Coupled Receptors.

Technologies involved in the discovery process of new molecules are becoming increasingly important, particularly if they are compatible with HTS.

However, existing technologies show limitations, require specific equipment and expensive technology licenses to use, and are not well-suited to HTS.

For this project, Cisbio is collaborating with the Institut de Genomique  Fonctionnelle (IGF) in Montpellier, France and with selected biotechnology companies.

Through this collaboration network and internal research, Cisbio will develop techniques for tagging specific intracellular proteins of interest, long-lived fluorescent tracers, using TR-FRET to study biological interactions in living cells.

"Our research teams’ know-how and their experience in developing HTRF^® technology allow us to envision a technique adapted to HTS which is incredibly simple compared to complex image analysis technologies," said Dr Gérard Mathis, director of R&D; of Cisbio international.

"Our first applications will address unmet needs in the functional study of a specific class of GPCRs, and we also envision increasing our involvement in academic research as a result."

Further Information: http://www.htrf.com