Invitrogen Awarded $1.24 M Grant For Biothreat Detection By U.S. Department Of Defense

Carlsbad, CA - Invitrogen Corporation, a life science company providing innovative technologies to support disease research and drug discovery, today announced that its subsidiary, Invitrogen Federal Systems, was awarded a $1,243,000 extension to an existing contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. The contract will support research using Invitrogen's proprietary ProtoArray protein microarray technology to detect and analyze biothreat agents such as hemorrhagic fever viruses, poxviruses and Bacillus anthracis (anthrax). This research will build upon work conducted under the original Technical Assistance Agreement for $970,000 awarded in January 2006, which focused on the detection and analysis of smallpox and Yersinia pestis (plague).

"We look forward to working closely with the Army to produce and validate ProtoArray protein microarrays that will improve the military's ability to detect dangerous bacteria and viruses," said Gregory T. Lucier, Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen Corporation. "Invitrogen has developed a broad suite of biodefense technologies that can detect various biothreat agents in air, food and water."

ProtoArray is a functional, high density protein microarray that can analyze entire pathogen and yeast proteomes or up to 5,000 human proteins in a single experiment, while other currently available protein microarrays are limited to 500 proteins. Additionally, ProtoArray can be used to simultaneously analyze proteins, antibodies or small molecules, simplifying work that traditionally took months to achieve into a single day. In addition to biodefense applications, Invitrogen uses ProtoArray to identify protein biomarkers associated with cancer and autoimmune diseases as well as in drug discovery research and functional genomics.

"In the near term, the type of research that Invitrogen is conducting will support the identification of protein biomarkers associated with biothreat agents, leading to the development of better, faster detection tools, diagnostics and vaccines," explained Paul Kinnon, General Manager for Environmental Diagnostics at Invitrogen, which includes biodefense research as well as food and water safety testing. "In the longer term, these findings will be the first step in developing personalized medicine applications for military use, such as blood tests to check an individual's immunization status or determine their susceptibility to certain diseases."

Invitrogen's research on this project will be conducted under the direction of James Meegan, Ph.D., Senior Director of Research & Development at Invitrogen, and is designed to support the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command's (USAMRMC) mission to provide solutions to medical problems of importance to the American war fighter at home and abroad. Robert Ulrich, Ph.D., is responsible for scientific and technical conduct of this project at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

In addition to the ProtoArray, Invitrogen has developed other technologies for the detection of pathological agents, including the PathAlert System, which was used by Instituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise, part of the Italian Ministry of Health, to detect Yersinia pestis during the 2006 Winter Olympic games. The PathAlert System has also been used to ensure public safety at other international public events including the 2006 Commonwealth Games and has been part of a Technical Readiness Assessment at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds, where the system was found to be a sensitive and specific molecular based approach for testing a number of biothreat agents such as anthrax and plague.

SOURCE: Invitrogen Corporation