FOCUSED BIOINFORMATICS
Our bioinformatics approach is a critical aspect of the company's research and development strategy and distinguishes ZymoGenetics from all other competitors. We pursue a focused bioinformatics strategy to identify a relatively small subset of genes that we believe has the highest probability of coding for proteins with therapeutic potential. Specifically, we have selected key protein categories that include members with demonstrated therapeutic potential or medically relevant biological activity. Identifying potentially important novel genes within the tremendous amount of DNA sequence data available is a critical first step in the discovery and development of protein therapeutics.
We were the first company to gain in-house access to Incyte's LifeSeq(TM) expressed sequence tag (EST) database. We also generated our own proprietary sequence database from cDNA libraries. Using a technique that dramatically decreased the representation of the more common, high-abundance cDNAs improved the detection of "rare transcripts" (low abundance cDNAs).
ZymoGenetics' proprietary algorithms bring a high level of intelligence to searches of sequence databases, which are probed with sophisticated digital representations of protein motifs. More recently, complex protein structure analyses have been used to select promising candidates.
Our success in identifying novel proteins is reflected in the many composition of matter patents awarded and still being issued for our genomics-derived proteins. ZymoGenetics has one of the strongest patent portfolios of any company working with protein therapeutics.
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