Monday, September 29, 2008

RainDance forms drug target research initiative

By Mass High Tech Staff

RainDance Technologies Inc., along with sanofi-aventis and Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg in France, launched a new research initiative called the dScreen Consortium, to develop high throughput screening (HTS) to find new drug targets. The ultimate goal of the project is to a create a digital microfluidic system for advanced HTS of bio-active compounds with purified targets and cell-based assays.

The consortium will have a base of operations at the Alsace Biovalley Cluster in Strasbourg France.  The dScreen project will use RainDance’s high-speed, small volume throughput technology and its own methodologies. The Lexington-based company’s technology can process up to 10 million micro droplets every hour, the company stated.

Louis Pasteur University will offer the consortium its droplet-based microfluidic expertise, using reactors at the chemical biology laboratory at the Institute for Science and Supramolecular Engineering.

In August, RainDance announced a deal with Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) for the use of the genetic sequencing services firm’s sequence enrichment application, RainStorm. The application is made to perform millions of sequences per day using thermocyclers. The collaboration will also aid RainDance in refining the product for its official launch this fall, the company said.

Privately held RainDance, which relocated its headquarters from Connecticut to Massachusetts in May, makes devices that conduct rapid experiments with droplets measured in one-trillionths of a liter. The company is a spinoff of Harvard University, the Medical Research Centre in Cambridge, England, and the Ecole Supérieure Physique Chimie Industrielles Ville Paris in Paris.