EMD Millipore Launches UbiquitinProfiler™ Services to Accelerate Drug Discovery Targeting the Ubiquitin Pathway

EMD Millipore, the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, today announced the addition of UbiquitinProfiler™ Services to their drug profiling portfolio which includes GPCRProfiler®, IonChannelProfiler™, PhosphataseProfiler™ and KinaseProfiler™. This new service determines the potency and selectivity of compounds targeting ubiquitin ligases, key enzymes in a pathway linked to many serious diseases.

Through this service, compounds sent to EMD Millipore by researchers are assessed via a panel of validated assays for their ability to enhance or inhibit the ubiquitination pathway.

With a central role in trafficking proteins for degradation, the ubiquitin pathway is an attractive target for drug discovery efforts in many areas including neurodegeneration, cancer and inflammation. With hundreds of proteins involved, however, the complexity of the ubiquitin cascade has presented a formidable barrier to efficient drug discovery.

“With our UbiquitinProfiler™ Services, we are able to more rapidly and effectively assess how potential drug compounds impact the ubiquitin pathway,” notes Dr. Steve Davies, Director of Merck Millipore's Dundee site. “Previously, researchers had to develop and optimize all the necessary reagents and assays themselves. The time required to do this combined with the complexity of the ubiquitin cascade limited the ability to thoroughly evaluate the true impact and specificity of compounds.”

The UbiquitinProfiler™ Services originated with a custom project conducted for Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s main economic development agency, to create functional assays for various ubiquitin cascades for compound screening and selectivity profiling.

Eleanor Mitchell, director of Commercialization at Scottish Enterprise, said, "For EMD Millipore to now develop the intellectual property that it is licensing from us into its newest service, UbiquitinProfiler™, is great news. From our experience, companies that license our intellectual property are able to commercialize and bring it to market quickly, creating lucrative new revenue streams through innovative products and services built on cutting-edge technology.”

For more information on the new UbiquitinProfiler™ Services, please visit the company article page