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KineMed Inks Deal with Amgen to Study Brain Proteins Linked to Neurodegenerative Disease

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – KineMed said today that it has entered an agreement with Amgen to apply its mass spec-based Dynamic Proteomics platform to the study of brain protein homeostasis in neurodegenerative disease.

Amgen will use the data generated by the platform to track synthesis and clearance rates of pathogenic brain proteins that drive neurodegeneration.

KineMed's technology combines wide-scale isotopic labeling and mass spectrometry to track protein activity kinetics, which can elucidate biological pathways and disease processes as well as allow for identification of potential disease biomarkers.

"Normal brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases, are characterized by the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the brain," Patrizia Fanara, KineMed's vice president of neuroscience, said in a statement. "Diagnostic tests have not previously been available that reflect the underlying dynamics of the proteins believed to play a causal role in neurodegeneration. This has been a major obstacle in developing drugs that slow the accumulation of these misfolded proteins."

Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

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