Danvers, MA, October 31, 2007 – Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. (CST) announced today that it will make PhosphoScan® Profiling, CST’s proprietary technology based on immunoaffinity purification and tandem mass spectrometry, and information within PhosphoSite®, CST’s knowledgebase focused on phosphorylation of the mammalian proteome, available to academic and non-profit researchers.
CST will offer a non-exclusive, non-commercial, royalty-free license to its PhosphoScan® patent rights to researchers at academic and not-for-profit institutions. PhosphoScan®, a proprietary process for identifying specific protein-modification sites, is a versatile technology that enables investigators to identify hundreds of specific protein modification sites in a single experiment. While this technology has primarily been used to characterize phosphorylated and acetylated sites, it can also be used to study all protein modifications. Development of this technology has been supported by CST and multiple SBIR grants from the NIH. CST will continue to commercialize PhosphoScan®/AcetylScan® technology to corporate entities through research services, alliances and licensing opportunities.
Additionally, the public information related to protein modification sites in PhosphoSite® (www.phosphosite.org) will be available to academic and corporate researchers. The public information includes non-redundant sites published in low-throughput papers, high-throughput papers and previously unpublished high-quality MS/MS sites made public only in PhosphoSite®. Regular releases of PhosphoSite® data sets will be provided upon request to interested researchers. PhosphoSite® is a comprehensive and widely used bioinformatics resource containing experimentally determined sites of phosphorylation in the mammalian proteome. The information in PhosphoSite® is curated and edited by Cell Signaling Technology scientists with advanced degrees and years of research experience in signaling and experimental biology. The development of PhosphoSite® has been supported by SBIR funding from the NIH and by CST.
“We hope that access to CST’s PhosphoScan® Profiling technology and the information in PhosphoSite® will help accelerate the pace of biomedical research, including the discovery of novel mechanisms of disease, novel biomarkers and potential drug targets, ” said Michael Comb, Ph.D., the company’s CEO.
Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. is a worldwide leader in the development and commercialization of phospho-specific antibodies and assays for kinase and pathway analysis, as well as novel discovery technologies such as PhosphoScan®. CST’s phospho-specific antibodies are validated in multiple assay platforms and are critical reagents in all stages of pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. PhosphoScan® leverages CST’s core capabilities in antibody development to deliver insight into cellular phosphorylation and acetylation profiles enabling more efficient and informative kinase drug discovery and clinical development. Information on CST can be obtained at the Company’s website at www.cellsignal.com.
