In their quest to find answers to scientific questions that could lead to better treatments for human treat disease, University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers discovered what may be a new way to purify proteins. The protein purification industry currently is an estimated $36 billion a year industry.
A Boston-area company thought the discovery so promising that last year it formed a company, licensed the technology and made a $500,000 investment in the research.
UNMC researchers Elliott Bedows, Ph.D., and Jason Wilken, Ph.D., were studying a hormone involved in pregnancy, one that also is detected in some cancers. They observed something different about the hormone that challenged conventional thinking.
What they discovered unwittingly could be a revolutionary way to purify recombinant proteins.
“In the course of all this research, we had to figure out how to purify all of these proteins – called recombinant proteins — and that’s essentially what we did,” Dr. Bedows said. “We came up with this technique to rapidly purify all of these proteins much faster than anything that currently is available.”
Recombinant proteins are natural proteins produced in a different cell system to replicate large quantities of protein conveniently and quickly for use in commercial industry, drug development, research, and in diagnostic applications.
Those working with the researchers say Dr. Bedow’s revolutionary technology has the potential to attract industry with its capability of purifying proteins with high yield and high purity at a very low cost.
Allied Minds, a Boston-area pre-seed investment company which provides funds for successful early stage technology, is the company that formed a partnership with UNeMed, the technology transfer organization for UNMC. It subsequently purchased the technology license and formed Purtein LLC. Last November, Allied Minds invested $500,000 in Purtein.
Allied Minds was scouting the midwest for hot technologies when Tom McDonald, Ph.D., presented Dr. Bedow’s technology to Christopher Silva, chief executive officer of Allied Minds.
James Linder, M.D., president of UNeMed, said the venture with Allied Minds is an exciting one. “We see the partnership as a fast, effective way to commercialize this novel technology. This technology has very broad applications to help companies or those with research interests get their job done. It can be used to make many products better.”
Dr. McDonald, director of UNMC’s Technology Advancement Group, and principal investigator for Purtein sponsored research, said most new drug discovery will be based on recombinant protein technology. “All companies that are looking at drug targeting will need many different kinds and large quantities of purified proteins and their derivatives.”
Silva, CEO of Purtein, said the protein purification technology will reduce both direct costs of chemicals required, as well as the indirect costs associated with the complexity and time required under current purification processes. Current purification processes represent up to 80 percent of the cost of production, he said.
“We are fortunate to be teaming with UNeMed, UNMC’s Technology Advancement Group and its scientific team, to bring what we believe will be the next generation of purification technology to the marketplace,” Silva said.
Since his technology was licensed to Purtein, Dr. Bedows finds himself engaged in conversations with patent attorneys, marketing people, and venture capitalists, when what he really would rather be doing is talking to other scientists about experiments.
“It turns out, much to my chagrin, that the technology to advance our research was more valuable that the research itself – that is to say we got more funding for the technique than for the actual data that we were producing,” Dr. Bedows said.