PerkinElmer Introduces Improved LANCE <i>Ultra</i> TR-FRET Platform for High-Throughput Screening Laboratories

PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader in Health Sciences and Photonics, today announced it has expanded its successful portfolio of high throughput screening (HTS) LANCE^® assays with the release of LANCE Ultra. PerkinElmer’s improved LANCE Ultra is a flexible and adaptable homogeneous technology for HTS and uHTS designed specifically for developing and optimizing sensitive assays for a variety of drug discovery targets, with a particular focus on applications for a wide range of kinase targets.

“Protein kinases regulate several important functions within cells, such as growth, proliferation and cell adhesion, making it one of the most important areas of study in today’s pharmaceutical and biotech laboratories,” says Dr. Richard Eglen, vice president and general manager of the Discovery and Research Reagents business of PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences. “The addition of LANCE Ultra to PerkinElmer’s broad offering of TR-FRET assay tools creates one of the industry’s largest portfolios targeting high value functional biochemical and cell based assays.”

LANCE Ultra utilizes ULight™, an innovative, low molecular weight red-shifted fluorescent dye that greatly enhances the performance of Time Resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (TR-FRET) assays by increasing the range of targets that can be identified. Dr. Eglen said, “Dysregulation of kinase activity plays causal roles in many human diseases, making kinases one of today’s most important drug discovery target classes.” LANCE Ultra reagents are specifically engineered for the precise development and optimization of kinase and enzyme assays, as well as for monitoring protein-protein interactions.

Ultra high throughput screening applications such as LANCE Ultra are easily adapted to any TR-FRET capable plate reader such as the PerkinElmer ViewLux™ uHTS imaging system or EnVision™ multimode reader, enabling greatly improved precision and remarkable throughput.

Other LANCE TR-FRET applications from PerkinElmer include LANCE cAMP cell based assay for the analysis and screening of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) drug targets and the TruPoint™ assay system, which is ideal for screening for therapeutic modulators of a wide variety of enzyme targets such as proteases and helicases.

In addition to its broad offering of traditional LANCE technologies, PerkinElmer has significantly enhanced its custom reagents service, offering expert labeling of a wide variety of peptides, proteins and antibodies with PerkinElmer’s proprietary europium and lanthanide chelate donor dyes, and ULight or APC acceptor dyes, all developed to the very highest standards.