April 10, 2002 — The test tube has been replaced by a glass slide the size of a postage stamp.

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Germany’s Scienion AG has teamed up with several leading academic and industrial institutions to develop biochips that rapidly and affordably detect life-threatening infections such as HIV or tuberculosis at a very early stage. Early detection is one of the major keys in successfully treating most infectious diseases.

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“During the course of an infection an entire spectrum of genes, especially those of the immune

system, are either activated or repressed. These must be identified. The information derived from this chip technology provides clinicians with a wholly new and very effective diagnostic tool,” explains Hans-Joachim Mollenkopf, project coordinator at Scienion.

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Scienion works with several major German research institutes, such as the Department of Immunology at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, to find out which genes are active during the different stages of an infection. Once this information is known, Scienion can custom design each chip for a specific disease.

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The technology and expertise of the Scienion founders has a long tradition. The company began as a spinoff of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, both in Berlin. They each have more than 50 years of genetic research and DNA chip experience.

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The Scienion chips differ in several respects from those of their competitors, such as the GeneChip, the first biochip on the market created by the California-based company Affymetrix. For example, Scienion treats its biochips with a patented coating that allows scientists to more efficiently attach millions of DNA, RNA, proteins or drug molecules in a bioactive form to the surface of the chip.

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Such an immunochip may then be used in the clinic to screen a patient for certain specific diseases. To detect the activity of a patient’s immune system, the patient’s RNA (messenger molecules that tell the cell machinery how much of which protein to make) is isolated from a blood sample, converted into millions of DNA molecules, labeled with a fluorescent marker and brought into contact with the DNA on the chip. Active gene products from the patient recognize their complementary partners on the chip and bind to them, producing a characteristic green, red or yellow fluorescent signal.

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Imaging and processing of the massive amount of data produced by such chips is provided, in collaboration with Scienion, by MicroDiscovery AG, a Berlin-based bioinformatics company. MicroDiscovery offers not only the technology to evaluate such microarray data, but also performs array design, image analysis, statistical evaluation, data mining and quality control services for their customers.

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In addition to the immunochip technology, Scienion already offers a large palette of services and products in the biochip field. According to Holger Eickhoff, chief executive and co-founder of Scienion, the secret to success lies in the employees, all of whom have already had intensive experience in the biotech field.

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“Scienion differs from many other biotech startups in the fact that we have both an internal production and customer support department, which are able to answer our customers’ questions, as well as solve all their problems either in person or via a hotline. I think that this is the right direction, because biochips are not only high quality products, but also products that require a high level of understanding,” Eickhoff explains.

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During its first business year, Scienion has concentrated on customized chips for individual customers within the research and clinical sector. Currently the first off-the-shelf products are being marketed for early diagnosis and research of several common diseases, such as rheumatism, asthma or cardiovascular diseases.

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Scienion is also one of the first companies worldwide to develop a commercially available protein chip. Protein chips are superior to DNA/RNA or oligo chips, due to the higher amount of information they provide.

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Scienion has developed protein chips to detect inflammatory diseases, especially those caused by autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatism. This method, known as serum profiling, allows clinicians to rapidly scan a patient’s blood for antibodies against common proteins in the body that cause this immune reaction. Research in the area of protein chips for such neurological disorders as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease as well as Huntington’s chorea (a genetic disorder causing dementia) is already under way.

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To further improve the protein chip technology, a method known as native spotting is currently in development at Scienion. Native spotting involves attaching the proteins to the chip surface in their “native” or natural state. The natural state of proteins, however, is in an aqueous environment. Therefore, the researchers have used a patented nanotechnology, known as a lab-on-a-chip to submerge the fixed proteins in microdroplets. These microdroplets not only keep the proteins on the chip in their native state, but also improve the test results. The microdroplets act as miniscule test tubes without walls, thus reducing the loss of valuable protein from the patient, due to absorption on test tube material.

Protein interactions can be useful, not only for the early diagnosis of many diseases, but also to study the mechanism of drug actions in the body or to determine the individual predisposition of certain patients to drug side effects and allergies. The pharmaceutical industry has shown a high interest in the biochip technology, which provides the perfect tool for high throughput screening of the millions of compounds generated in many companies daily.

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Eickhoff is optimistic about the company’s future, “In no later than 10 years time, biotechnology will influence our daily lives more than any other technology, even IT. Biotech companies will be the Intels and Microsofts of today … because computers and Internet may be attractive to consumers, but health is essential.”

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