Pressure BioSciences introduces PCT-HD System to global proteomics market

Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (OTCQB: PBIO) ("PBI" and the "Company"), a leader in the development and sale of broadly enabling, pressure cycling technology ("PCT")-based sample preparation solutions to the worldwide life sciences industry, today announced the commercial release of the PCT-HD system. The Company plans to highlight PCT-HD at the annual meeting of the US Human Proteomic Organization ("US HUPO"), being held March 15-18 in Tempe, Arizona. The Company added that key advantages of the PCT-HD System in the application of biomarker discovery will be discussed in two separate presentations during the conference.

The PCT-HD System combines two of the Company's unique products: the recently released, patent-pending micro-Pestle consumable with an enhanced Barocycler NEP2320 instrument. This combination enables faster, less cumbersome and higher quality homogenization, extraction, and digestion of proteins. PCT-HD was developed by the Company's scientists and engineers in collaboration with Professor Ruedi Aebersold and Dr. Tiannan Guo of the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich, and the University of Zurich, both in Zurich, Switzerland. Drs. Aebersold and Guo have recently combined PCT-HD with AB Sciex's SWATH-Mass Spectrometry – calling the resulting method "PCT-SWATH".

Dr. Nate Lawrence, Vice President of Marketing and Sales for PBI, said: "For the creation of PCT-HD, we greatly increased both the maximum working temperature and pressure of our standard Barocycler instrument. We then incorporated the unique homogenization and extraction capabilities of our new, patent-pending micro-Pestle consumable with this enhanced Barocycler instrument. The result was a significantly improved method for protein homogenization, extraction, and digestion. This was particularly true with small tissue samples, such as the type of sample a scientist gets from a needle biopsy. We believe the data in the two separate presentations being made this coming week at the US HUPO Meeting will highlight the clear advantages of our new PCT-HD System."

Mr. Richard T. Schumacher, President and CEO of PBI, stated: "We are very excited about the introduction of the PCT-HD System to the worldwide proteomics market. As we move deeper into the age of precision medicine, there is a critical need to continually have new and improved tools to increase the recovery of proteins from both diseased and normal specimens, especially from small needle biopsy tissue samples. This improvement in sample preparation needs to be accomplished dependably for hundreds and even thousands of different proteins. The data generated by Drs. Aebersold and Guo using the Beta version PCT-HD System indicate that this new system can greatly improve the quality and recovery of proteins from tissue samples prior to analysis. Scientists worldwide understand that improved sample preparation accelerates discovery, which can then lead to faster and better outcomes."

Mr. Schumacher continued: "In addition to the key advantages of greater speed, easier handling, and increased quality, the PCT-HD System also offers a level of flexibility that we believe will greatly support its adoption and growth across multiple markets. Although Drs. Aebersold and Guo have developed protocols for the combination of PCT-HD with SWATH-MS, the PCT-HD System is not limited to any certain mass spectrometer or method of data analysis. On the contrary, we believe that PCT-HD can become an important front-end sample preparation tool with virtually any mass spectrometer in use in proteomics today. Thus, we believe there is a very large potential market for PCT-HD, the next generation protein preparation system."

SOURCE Pressure BioSciences, Inc.