Latest success for Nottingham biopharma cluster

Nottingham, UK – CellAura, the leading producer of fluorescence reagents for drug discovery and life sciences research, today announced a development partnership with Cisbio Bioassays. Under the terms of the agreement, CellAura will provide pharmacologically validated reagents to Cisbio Bioassays that will be applied to Cisbio Bioassays’ Tag-lite™ range of non-radioactive assays for cellular studies.

Commenting on the collaboration, CellAura CEO Dai Hayward said: “Maximising cellular information is increasingly seen as the key to successful drug discovery. CellAura combines world-renowned expertise from the University of Nottingham in the fields of synthetic chemistry and molecular pharmacology to produce high quality fluorescent receptor ligands as key components in drug candidate screening assays and imaging techniques. This new partnership with Cisbio Bioassays, which is one of the leaders in bioassays for cell surface receptor and functional studies, recognizes our rapid progress and is a major milestone.”

CellAura will develop a number of reagents for Cisbio Bioassays’ Tag-lite™ range. Tag-lite, part of Cisbio Bioassays’ comprehensive HTRF cellular platform, provides a homogeneous, non-radioactive and cost-effective alternative for the study of cell surface receptor dimerization and ligand binding.

François Degorce, head of marketing for Cisbio Bioassays added: “GPCR and more generally cell surface receptor investigation are currently among the hottest topics in drug discovery. To enhance our Tag-lite platform addressing this area, we seek out partnerships with the best experts in their respective fields, and are pleased to collaborate with CellAura for the development of non-radioactive fluorescent ligands.”

CellAura will also retain rights for the reagents developed for use in their own range of assays for certain markets. Financial details were not disclosed.

CellAura is a spin out company from the University of Nottingham: combining world-renowned expertise in the fields of synthetic chemistry and molecular pharmacology we produce high quality fluorescent G-protein coupled receptor ligands for use in molecular pharmacology and imaging at the single cell level. Applications include:

High Content Screening – Live cell imaging of receptor-ligand binding, displacement, and receptor internalisation.

Ligand Binding Kinetics – Real-time analysis of ligand association and dissociation rates to determine receptor affinity.

Dual Readout Binding and Function (eg Ca++ signalling) – Distinguishes agonists, antagonists/inverse agonists, off-target effects and non-binders in one assay, to eliminate false hits and reduce follow-on screening.

High Throughput Screening – Dynamic or endpoint binding and displacement Fluorescence Intensity assays.

Confocal Microscopy – Localise receptor distribution in tissue sections, cell cultures and single cells

Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) – Real-time analysis of single molecule ligand-receptor interactions.

Fluorescent Ligand Binding – Increased safety, reduced disposal cost and environmental impact vs radioligand binding.

Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) – No need to generate fluorescence-tagged receptor antibodies, select receptor expressing cells using a direct receptor-binding ligand.

For more information visit www.cellaura.com