The Life Sciences industry depends on a broad range of tests, known as bioassays, to discover new drugs, identify new biomarkers or measure biomarker levels for diagnosis and monitoring of diseases. One of the most important forms of bioassay is the protein bioassay. However, proteins are complex and fragile bio-molecules and often interact in a complex and unpredictable way with other proteins and/or protein analysis equipment. This has held back the adoption of protein bioassay technology in many high value applications.

The global biochip market is presently estimated at $4.25B and is forecasted to reach $9.1 billion by 2015. Disposable ‘chips’ account for 60% of the market, with the remainder driven by instrument, reagent and consumable sales. Current state-of-the-art biochip systems can be viewed in two dominant technology categories:

1. Labeled Systems: Dominated by 2-D Planar Array Systems, and Bead Systems.

2. Label free systems: Dominated by Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) systems that deliver ‘kinetic’ data (information on the nature of interactions within a given bioassay over time).

Label-free systems offer advantages over the current labeled systems as real-time monitoring of biomolecular interactions in label-free formats provides information on binding kinetics, affinity and sample concentration that benefit applications such as drug discovery, development and quality control. However, label free systems lack the sensitivity and throughput of labeled systems, and are typically more expensive and complex to use. As such labeled systems presently dominate applications in biomarker identification, validation and clinical screening.

Furthermore, while each system has its advantages; common problems across all include: Limited reproducibility between bioassays; limited sensitivity (especially within label free systems); complex and costly assay optimization requirements, and data corruption caused by non-specific interactions.

The Bio-ID overcomes these problems by creating a new category of biochip system that combines the kinetic data presently restricted to low sensitivity label free systems, with the high-throughput, high-density, and improved sensitivity of labeled systems. The Bio-ID is also being automated for Point of Care (PoC) clinical use, to help further drive biochip market growth past 2015. Such a unique system delivers a disruptive solution to protein screening with unrivalled utility and performance.

The competitive advantages of the Bio-ID are driven by three proprietary technologies:

• Patented ‘Longitudinal Assay’ processing and analysis.
• Patented flow control system that enables low cost yet precise control of nano liter flow volumes.
• Patented nano-particle surface technology for immobilizing proteins onto a biochip surface.

Longitudinal Assay Processing and Analysis
The Bio-ID is the world’s first screening platform to use ‘Longitudinal Assay’ processing and analysis; wherein samples and reagents are iteratively flowed across bioassays as measurements of the fluorescent intensity of each region (spot) are taken to provide insights into the nature of protein interactions over time. The Longitudinal Assay both combines and enhances the benefits of labeled screening methods with those of label free systems. Delivering end users with sensitive (sub pg/ml limits of detection), kinetic data on protein interactions in a low-cost, high-throughput, high-density format; eliminating the requirement for resource and time consuming assay development procedures, while helping distinguish ‘non-specific’ (false) signals, from ‘specific’ (true) signals within a bioassay.

Dilation Pumping: High Precision Flow Control
Inanovate has developed a proprietary flow control method to precisely control the flow rate of nano-liter volumes of samples and reagents across the assay surface. This patented ‘dilation pump’ technology significantly improves assay throughput, and reduces complexity and cost.

Nano-particle Surface Technology
Inanovate overcomes the limitations of existing biochip surface technology by using many thousands of nano-particles to ‘anchor’ individual proteins to an array surface. The nano-particles influence the spacing, density and orientation of proteins across an array surface; helping optimize and control the activity/responsiveness of proteins throughout an assay, improving both assay sensitivity (sub pg/mL) and reproducibility (sub 5% assay to assay CV’s).