Sengenics, a leading precision medicine company, today announced that the company has made full-length, correctly folded and functional COVID-19 antigens available for purchase for both research and vaccine development purposes. Sengenics has successfully expressed these antigens using the company’s patented and validated KREX™technology.

”The surge of COVID-19 infections has pushed us to accelerate the production of SARS-CoV-2 antigens using our patented KREX™ technology. We are now offering unencumbered access to these antigens for the global research community and are looking for collaborations in this space to develop a vaccine and accelerate characterisation of COVID-19,” said Dr Arif Anwar, CEO of Sengenics.

“The folded structure of a protein antigen is a key component of antibody recognition. The antigenic property of a protein is dependent on efficient epitope presentation and subsequent stimulation of B and T cells. However, since most antibodies are thought to recognise discontinuous epitopes on their target proteins, it’s critical that antigens used in serological assays or presented to B-cells for antibody-based vaccine development are in a natively-folded form. The use of our KREX™ technology for the production of the SARS-CoV-2 antigens will ensure these antigens are correctly folded, preserving all conformational antibody binding sites, and that they are highly purified, free from bacterial contaminants, ready for downstream applications,” said Professor Jonathan Blackburn, CSO of Sengenics.

KREX™-based COVID-19 antigens are now available for sale by Sengenics for both Research and Commercial use. Parties who are generating higher affinity monoclonal antibodies for commercial vaccine purposes or are interested in collaborating to develop antivirals for COVID-19 are invited to contact Sengenics at [email protected].

Read full press release at businesswire.com