The company Innoprot has developed a new test to evaluate the inhibitors of two enzymes involved in Alzheimer’s disease. The test is based on a new cell line recently launched and which has become the only product in the market allowing enzyme monitoring in living cells. Thus, the inhibiting capacity of different chemicals in novel drugs development can be quantified.

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of beta-amyloid (bA) peptides in the brain. The bA peptide derives from the sequential cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein (APP). However, the activity of the two enzymes (beta- and gamma-secretases) processing the beta amyloid involved in the disease may be inhibited, so the search for these compounds shows great interest to the pharmaceutical industry.

The test developed by Innoprot is based on a cell line and on the fluorescence technology in order to evaluate new inhibitors. It allows the quantification of the inhibiting capacity of these compounds, since fluorescent vesicles are observed in the cell cytoplasm. The number of vesicles increases or decreases depending on the inhibition rate caused by the compound.

The cell line has been designed for High Content Screening applications, which enable the screening of hundreds or thousands of compounds in the evaluation of potential drugs on living cells.

Innoprot recently released this development in the annual conference of the Society for Biomolecular Sciences held from 11-15 April in Phoenix (US), where the company met many potential clients from pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi-Aventis or Bayer.

Innoprot is a spin-off of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) with headquarters at the Bizkaia Technology Park. The company provides in vitro cell systems for drug discovery and development tests based on recombinant DNA (rDNA), RNA interference (RNAi) and protein interaction technologies.

Furthermore, the company provides easy and fast screening of compounds coming from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies through custom test development, high-throughput screening (HTS) or High Content Analysis (HCA).