Kinexus Bioinformatics announces the commercial release of Protein Kinase Microarray

New kinase array designed for drug screening, substrate profiling and kinase interaction discovery

Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation announced the commercial release of its novel Protein Kinase Microarray with 200 recombinant human protein kinases for screening. The microarray has wide utility including applications for drug target counter screening, to identify novel kinase substrates, establish kinase antibody specificities, and for the discovery and testing of protein kinase-protein and protein kinase-compound interactions.

With these new and unique kinase microarray services, clients can now inexpensively assay the abilities of their lead compounds to inhibit any of the 200 different protein kinases for as low as $1.65 per kinase with triplicate measurements. Industry standards for these types of measurements typically cost $4-5 per kinase tracked. This counter screening of kinases can be used to establish the specificity of promising therapeutic inhibitors or target kinases in much more cost effective manner than previously available. All compounds can be further validated for direct activity effects in vitro with the Kinase-Inhibitor Profiling Services offered by Kinexus. This complements the Kinex(TM) 800 Antibody Microarray Services, in which endogenous physiological substrates of target kinases can also be defined to measure the effects of drug leads in vivo in cultured cells and tissues from treated animals. The specificity of suspected protein kinase-protein interactions can also be investigated with the new kinase microarray.

"Protein kinases are well recognized by the pharmaceutical and biotech industry as highly productive targets for drugs with the potentially treat over 400 human diseases, commented Dr. Steven Pelech, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Kinexus. "With 516 human protein kinases and only about 75 that have been seriously targeted by the pharmaceutical industry so far, there are exciting possibilities for the identification of new kinase drug targets and new applications for existing drugs with this type of technology".