NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Stem cell products developer Stemgent said today that it has started a new business in Scotland that will develop reagents and kits and offer services for use in studying the ubiquitin proteasome pathway (UPP) for drug research.
Stemgent, which has operations in Boston and San Diego, will invest roughly $4.5 million over three years in the new venture, which is based in Dundee.
Ubiquigent will collaborate with The Protein Ubiquitylation Unit of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signaling at the University of Dundee, the company said.
Stemgent said that it will handle the initial marketing for Ubiquigent's products in the US, and it will announce its plans for European marketing at some point in the near future. It added that the first three employees of Ubiquigent have been working for the past four months with the protein production and assay development team at SCILLS in preparation for initial product launches.
"This is a fascinating scientific field – the role and mechanism of action of most of the proteins involved in the complex biology of the ubiquitin proteasome pathway are still to be fully understood, and only some of the tools necessary to do this exist today," Stemgent CEO Ian Ratcliffe, who also will serve as CEO of the new venture, said in a statement.