NEW YORK, Oct. 24 - Xanthon has won a patent in Australia that covers a method of directly detecting biomolecules through a “transition-metal-mediated, catalytic, oxidation-reduction reaction,” the company said on Wednesday.
The patent, numbered 724,600 and entitled "Electrochemical detection of nucleic acid hybridization," is owned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is exclusively licensed to Xanthon on a worldwide basis.
The patented technology was discovered by Holden Thorp, professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-founder of Xanthon.
The company, based in Research Triangle Park, NC, is developing a series of analytical platforms based on its proprietary electrochemical technology that it says can make biomolecule detection and information processing more efficient.
Xanthon's first product, the Xpression high-throughput gene-expression analysis system, will be launched to pharmaceutical companies early next year, the company said.
Xanthon also said it is working “under a collaborative agreement” to validate the utility of the its technology “in a diagnostic application where multiple genetic targets are detected in a single sample.” This collaboration may result in a joint product development program.
It was not immediately clear with whom Xanthon has struck this collaboration.