TriAltus Bioscience Announces Licensing Agreement with UAB and Begins to Commercialize Novel Protein Purification Technology

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., March 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- TriAltus Bioscience, LLC today announced that it has licensed a novel protein purification platform from The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and is already working to commercialize the technology. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Proteins are widely used in life science research: 80% of drugs in development are made of proteins or act on proteins. Industry experts predict demand for genetically engineered proteins will continue to grow rapidly, yet production is cumbersome and inefficient. Isolating the desired protein requires 4-5 purification steps, on average, and most of the protein is lost in the process.

The new purification method licensed by TriAltus works by isolating proteins in a single purification step, with ultra-high purity and yield 100 times greater than by conventional methods.

"We had our first commercial sale less than a month after completing the agreement with UAB," said Robert Shufflebarger, co-founder and CEO of TriAltus. "This is practically unheard of for a bioscience company, and speaks to the need in the market for a better solution."

The other co-founder of TriAltus is Dmitry Vassylyev, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAB, where he led the team that invented the technology. Vassylyev tested this method on five notoriously challenging biological molecules, with remarkable results. The work was published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

TriAltus has begun to raise Series A funding to accelerate commercialization of this technology. Shufflebarger said the company already has customers in four countries, and will use the proceeds to increase production to meet demand.

"We are focused on identifying our best, most promising technologies and transitioning them into the marketplace," said Kathy Nugent, Ph.D., executive director of UAB's Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. "We believe that TriAltus is well-positioned to accomplish this." 

ABOUT TRIALTUS BIOSCIENCE
Trialtus Bioscience, LLC (www.trialtusbioscience.com) provides life scientists with tools for production and purification of genetically engineered proteins. Our novel affinity tag system delivers proteins with ultra-high purity and yield in a single step. For more information, contact [email protected] or call 504-427-7535.

CONTACTS:
Rhonda Melancon, TriAltus Bioscience, LLC, Vice President of Marketing, 504-427-7535, [email protected] Jeff Hansen, UAB, Research Editor, 205-209-2355, [email protected]

SOURCE TriAltus Bioscience, LLC