AEGiS-PRn: Ambion Awarded Grant to Further Develop Armored RNA(R) Technology

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Ambion Awarded Grant to Further Develop Armored RNA(R) Technology

PRNewswire - October 20, 1999

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Ambion, Inc. has been awarded a phase II SBIR grant for $808,000 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to further the development of their Armored RNA(R) technology. The main application of this technology is to manufacture stable, robust RNA that can be used as controls or standards in viral diagnostic kits. Tests are now available from several diagnostic companies that measure the concentration of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the plasma of infected patients by assaying the concentration of viral RNA. Dependable and accurate standards and controls are absolute necessities if a diagnostic test is to produce reliable results.

Until the advent of the Armored RNA(R) technology, developed jointly with Cenetron Diagnostics (Cedar Creek, TX), the only choice available to diagnostic companies was to use "naked" RNA for their standards. Naked RNA is very susceptible to degradation by enzymes called ribonucleases that are almost everywhere in the environment. Armored RNA(R) technology is used to assemble naked RNA within a shell of bacteriophage proteins, thereby "Armoring" the RNA. Armored RNA is completely protected from ribonuclease digestion until the protein shell is intentionally removed during the assay procedure.

To date, Roche Diagnostic Systems (Branchburg, NJ), Innogenetics (Belgium) and Gen-Probe (San Diego, CA) have obtained non-exclusive licenses to use Armored RNA as controls and standards for diagnostic applications.

The aims of the grant are three-fold. First, up to 1 kilobase of RNA can be packaged as Armored RNA in the current state of the technology. Efforts will be applied to packaging at least 3 kb of RNA. The second goal is to develop a simple, direct method for accurately quantifying the concentration of Armored RNA(R) in a sample. Finally, some of the diagnostic tests use a centrifugation step to concentrate the virus sample before extracting the RNA. Armored RNA will be modified such that it will have the same sedimentation properties as HIV and HCV in plasma.

CONTACT: Brittan Pasloske, Ph.D. of Ambion, Inc., 512-651-0194, or fax, 512-651-0200, or email, bpasloske@ambion.com.

SOURCE Ambion, Inc.
991020
PR991044

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