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Company News: Project Group ProDetekt at Life Science Inkubator (LSI) Sachsen extends patent protection for PRET-ELISA technology to the U.S.

– Solution enables significant optimization of ELISA-based protein analytics

Dresden, Germany, June 21, 2018 – ProDetekt, a start-up project incubated at Life Science Inkubator Sachsen, has been granted a U.S. patent for its proprietary PRET-ELISA technology, which complements the ELISA method used in bioanalytics world-wide. The Company had already received broad European patent protection for its technology in March 2018.

The PRET technology developed by ProDetekt allows for a substantial improvement of standard ELISA (Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay) tests used in the daily routine of medical diagnostics and research labs. ELISA is a standard test for disease-relevant biomarkers in complex biological samples. However, only a limited number of validated ELISA kits for a few scientifically and clinically relevant biomarkers is commercially available today. Researchers therefore need to design their own assays –  a costly and time-consuming process. Moreover, the currently available reagents limit the performance of these assays in terms of sensitivity and measuring range. PRET expands the ELISA measuring range by about 2 to 3 orders of magnitude and thereby allows easier and more cost-effective establishment and validation of ELISA-based protein tests.

ProDetekt originates from a Junior Research Group at the Chair of Bioanalytics located at the University of Leipzig’s Center for Biotechnology and Biomedicine (BBZ) and has been incubated at LSI Sachsen since May 2016.

„We are delighted that we could further expand our patent position and obtain the key U.S. patent only a few months after receiving a broad European patent,” said Dr. Norman Gerstner, project leader of ProDetekt. “The U.S. is a major market for our technology and we are looking forward to further validating and developing the technology up to market.”