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Innovations at Biotechnica 2010
Hanover, Germany
To introduce current trends in innovative technology at the Biotechnica 2010 the Deutsche Messe invited the press to a guided tour through the trade fair. A preselection of companies demonstrating their products were visited. Dr. Anja Gaugel and Dr. Martin Friedrich from GIT VERLAG joined it, and present the latest novelties for biotechnology research and analysis below.
First Ian Gunter from BJS Biotechnologies presented the new Ultra Rapid Real Time PCR Thermal Cycler - UF1, which is six times faster than usual PCR cycler, in line with this they presented at their booth a Formula 1 car by Red Bull, which attracted many people. The secret why this product can be so much faster than usual PCR cycler is that it has a new patented heating system; whereas the sample plate is basically a thin metal coated plate, which is thereby also the heating system.
Afterwards Dr. Detlev Frermann from Biozym Scientific presented their product FluorChem E, a new digital imaging system, which can measure chemiluminescence from for example protein blots and also fluorescence labeled DNA within the same digital darkroom.
Guenther A. Mohr presented the company BusinessXcel, which supports companies in the Life Science sector in developing strategies to patent their products. The company consists by now of about 40 employees, whereas one third is located in the US and the other two third in India. The Company not only helps in developing strategies to develop patents they can also help biotech companies in the case of a legal action.
Apeiron Biologics was presented by Dr. Hans Loibner, CEO. The Company was one of the finalists within the Biotechnica Award 2010 and he explained the three most proimising projects Apeiron is working on right now. The most advanced project is an enzyme -biotherapeutics, human Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (project name: APNO1), which successfully finished Phase I and was now exclusively licensed to GlaxoSmithKline, who will start Phase II soon.
The winner of the Biotechnica Award 2010 was presented afterwards by Onno van de Stolpe, CEO, from Galapagos. The Company just started a pan-European Phase II clinical trial in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients for its novel mode-of-action candidate drug GLPG0259.
An innovative new instrument was shown by Dr.
Ulrich Rant from Dynamic Biosensors. He presented the new product switchSense which allows the measurement of molecular dynamics on a chip. In brief short DNA molecules with receptors as capture sites are chemically tethered to metal microelectrodes. Since DNA is loaded negative the application of electrostatic charge leads to a molecular switching behavior. With this novel platform technology binding affinities and kinetics of for example antibodies, which bind to the DNA, can be measured.
Dr. Matthias Arnold from DASGIP presented an iPad application which was one of the few industrial applications that was available in April 2010 when the iPad was first launched. This application allows users to monitor and control all relevant process values in up to 16 parallel reactors at different locations around the world in online mode.
Dr. Michael Meyer from the Forschungsinstitut für Leder und Kunststoffbahnen (FILK) showed some fascinating news from the field of tissue engineering. They developed a 3D blotting system to generate individual, complex soft tissue implants of collagen based suspensions. This might be the future for transplants for example of whole organs, although a lot of legal issues still have to be clarified.
A group of the Technical University of Dresden, Germany is working within the field of white biotechnology. Dipl.-Ing. Felix Lenk explained how they established a production process for secondary active substances with hairy root and callus culture of sage and sunflower. Especially the pharma and cosmetic industry is interested on these substances as for example vitamin E as a preservative composition.
Contact:
Dr. Anja Gaugel
anja.gaugel@wiley.com
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Keywords : Anja Gaugel Apeiron Biologics Biotechnica Biotechnica 2010 Biozym BJS Biotechnologies BusinessXcel DASGIP Deutsche Messe Dynamic Biosensors FILK Galapagos Life Science Martin Friedrich Technical University of Dresden
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