Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Intrinsic Bioprobes Receives US Patent for Protein Biomarkers for Myocardial Infarction

Premium

Biomarker discovery firm Intrinsic Bioprobes announced this week that it has been granted a US patent for biomarkers and assays for the determination of myocardial infarction.

According to the patent, US No. 7,816,095, the company identified the proteins serum amyloid A and S-sulfonated transthyretin as biomarkers for myocardial infarction and developed a three-marker panel consisting of SAA, SS-TTR, and known MI biomarker myoglobin that in a 192-sample study demonstrated predictive power exceeding that of conventional MI assays.

In addition to being useful for detecting myocardial infarction, the biomarkers are also interesting in that "they clearly demonstrate the significance of protein microheterogeneity in human disease, which has been a largely unexplored niche in human molecular biology," Urban Kiernan, the company's director of biomarker discover, said in a statement.

The biomarkers were discovered using Intrinsic Bioprobe's mass spectrometric immunoassay technology – a patented pipette immunoenrichment method that uses a high-throughput, high-binding-capacity microcolumn activated with antibodies to isolate low-abundance proteins in complex samples. Researchers analyze the isolated proteins via single reaction-monitoring mass spec, which enables them to quantitate protein variants.

In July, the company announced an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific to co-develop and market protein biomarker assays based on the technology (PM 07/15/2010).