EvoGenix awarded US patent

Sydney biotechnology company EvoGenix has been granted a key patent for its proprietary EvoGene technology in the US.

EvoGenix is in the business of accelerated evolution -- EvoGene technology fast-tracks nature's own random, suck-it-and-see approach to protein formulation, to optimise proteins such as enzymes, growth factors and antibodies for medical or industrial applications.

Managing director Dr Merilyn Sleigh described the granting of the company's patent as an important endorsement of the novelty of its technology, that will be of "great assistance" in marketing its protein-optimisation capabilities to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in Australia and overseas.

"The timing is excellent, since we have recently completed laboratory studies to perfect our methods," Sleigh said. "The impressive improvements in protein properties that we are now able to demonstrate, together with this patent protection, give us a very strong marketing package. We are now seeing our first commercial projects for protein optimisation beginning to take shape".

EvoGene's technology for 'evolving' and selecting proteins with enhanced function came out of the CRC for Diagnostics in Melbourne, where the company's research team is still based.

Sleigh said the company was now seeing its first commercial projects for protein optimisation beginning to take shape.

The improved efficiency or binding properties that EvoGene's has been able to achieve with its 'tweaked' proteins reveal Mother Nature as something less than a perfect designer -- some of her solutions bear comparison to the fantastically inefficient machines of the inventor Heath-Robinson, of cartoon fame.

Among other things, Evogenix researchers have been able to obtain a 10 to 120-fold improvement in the binding affinity of an antibody for its antigen, and a 10,000-fold increase in the activity of a bacterial enzyme for an antibiotic substrate.

The technology exploits the viral enzymes that are inherently prone to making random errors -- mutations -- when they copy RNA-encoded genetic recipes for proteins.

Sleigh said the enzymes generated multiple copies of randomly mutated RNA code that specify proteins that may never have arisen in nature -- in a single protein consisting of a chain of 400 amino acids, the potential number of amino-acid permutations for each position in the chain is 8000 -- for two bases, at different positions, it is 64 million.

The company's EvoGene technology potentially gives it access to an almost limitless repertoire of novel proteins, with novel functions, precise binding affinities for specific receptors on cell-surfaces, or to catalyse highly selective enzyme reactions with selected substrates.