Cisbio and Lumiphore Announce Partnership for New Product and Technology Development Incorporating Lumi4™ Compounds

Cisbio, a global developer of HTRF^® (Homogeneous Time-Resolved Fluorescence) technology and services used in assay development and drug screening, and Lumiphore, Inc., an early-stage biotechnology company developing proprietary lanthanide technology for use in high-value applications, announced that they have signed an exclusive agreement for the incorporation of Lumiphore’s Lumi4™ complexes in Cisbio assays.

Under the agreement, Cisbio holds the exclusive rights to apply Lumi4™ technology to current and future research and development initiatives in TR-FRET-based (Time-Resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer) assays for drug discovery. Lumi4™ compounds bring excellent photophysical properties, increased sensitivity and stability to TR-FRET assays for high-throughput screening (HTS) applications and the growing homogeneous assay market. The incorporation of Lumi4™ compounds to Cisbio’s proprietary HTRF^® technology has the potential to enable the development of a second generation of assay platforms used in HTS, particularly in the fields of GPCR (G-Protein Coupled Receptors) and kinase screening.

"This agreement represents a major step in our quest for highly performing TR-FRET assays," said François Degorce, head of HTRF^® marketing and business development, Cisbio. "We strongly believe that Lumi4™ compounds will enable us to widen our HTRF^® product portfolio and strengthen our leading position in this field."

HTRF^® is a highly sensitive, robust technology for the detection of molecular interactions of proteins in vitro and is widely used for primary and secondary screening phases of drug development. HTRF^® combines standard FRET technology with time-resolved measurement of fluorescence. During the FRET process, HTRF^® fluorophores emit long-lived fluorescence which can be discriminated from short-lived background fluorescence, boosting detection of these homogeneous assays.

Lumi4™ complexes are a new class of fluorescent lanthanide detection reagents based on lanthanide technology patented by Professor Kenneth N. Raymond, chairman and president of Lumiphore, and coworkers at the University of California, Berkeley. Lanthanides are used as reagents by researchers due to their strong luminescent properties, and these patents relate to a shell surrounding the lanthanide molecule which enables them to be used as extremely efficient FRET donors. These complexes have long emission lifetimes and offer a number of major advantages over existing fluorophores used for detection, including higher signal-to-noise ratio and stability.

“Cisbio has an extensive HTRF^® product line and expertise in drug discovery research, and our agreement with them validates the capabilities of Lumiphore’s technology,” said Professor Raymond. “We look forward with excitement and enthusiasm to a productive partnership.”

Combining the two technologies will allow for the development of new HTRF^® applications and increased possibilities for HTS implementation of Cisbio’s assays.