License for Protease Method Fuels Start-Up Firm.(Catalyst Biosciences Inc. licensed a method from University of California)

Genomics and Proteomics, March, 2004 by Tolchin, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Tolchin Catalyst Biosciences Inc., San Francisco, a biotechnology start-up company focusing on the engineering of recombinant proteases as therapeutics in the areas of cancer and inflammation, licensed a method for determining the substrate specificity of a protease from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Therapeutic proteases are a superior alternative to therapeutic antibodies because they act catalytically rather than stoichiometrically and are thus much more potent. They also irreversibly alter their targets whereas antibodies only block a target's function by binding to it but not destroying it. "There are about 500 proteases in the encoded genome, and many of them have properties that are amenable to adapting...

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