Press Release

NIH Awards SBIR Grant to Panomics, Inc.

Redwood City, Calif. November, 2001—Panomics, Inc. has been awarded a National Institute of Health, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. The grant will be devoted to the development of technologies for the identification of short-lived proteins.

Panomics' team of scientists will develop an innovative technology to identify labile proteins, using libraries of proteins fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP) to monitor protein degradation. Short-lived proteins may plan important roles in critical biological functions as well as regulatory processes. Their turnover presents a formidable challenge to a new drug target discovery. The research will attempt to identify all short-lived proteins in the human proteome. Current approaches to identify and corroborate short-lived proteins involve slow, laborious and expensive procedures such as pulse-chase labeling or immunoprecipitation in crude cell lysates.

"This is a very ambitious, yet innovative, interesting and logical approach whose preliminary results strongly suggest its feasibility and exciting possibilities," commented the NIH reviewer.