BellBrook Labs Awarded Patent on Transcreener® HTS Assay for Glycosyltransferases

BellBrook Labs announces that they have been awarded a fourth U.S. patent for their innovative line of Transcreener® HTS Assay kits. This new patent, U.S. 7,847,066, describes the invention of a universal assay for UDP-glycosyltransferases based on direct detection of UDP in a high-throughput format.

There are over 200 glycosyltransferases encoded in the human genome that use either UDP-, GDP- or CMP-activated sugars as the donor substrates. UDP-glycosyltransferases are the most abundant and they play a key role in metabolism of drugs. In the Transcreener® UDP Assay, the detection of UDP produced in the enzyme reaction allows for a universal system to measure UDP-glycosyltransferase activity with any acceptor substrate. Because it allows homogenous, mix-and-read detection, the Transcreener® HTS Assay platform offers significant advantages over other assay methods that require separation steps.

In combination with existing Transcreener® assays for GDP and CMP, the newly patented technology will accelerate the discovery of improved drugs targeting glycosylation events in diseases, such as cancer, type II diabetes and neurodegeneration.