Sygnature Discovery Enhances SPR Capacity with Expansion

Sygnature Discovery have installed a fourth Biacore surface plasmon resonance (SPR) system at our BioCity, Nottingham laboratories. The new machine will significantly expand our biophysics capacity and allow us to meet increasing client demand for our drug discovery services from across the world.

The new machine is a Biacore 8K v2 SPR system from Cytiva (formerly GE Healthcare), identical to the previous machine that was installed in 2019 alongside the earlier Biacore 8K v1 and Biacore T200 SPR systems. These are complemented by a Nanotemper Monolith NT Automated microscale thermophoresis system, which provides a similarly high throughput but homogeneous solution-based alternative biophysical platform for characterising binding interactions.

SPR is an important technique for determining the biophysical characteristics of potential drug molecules. It allows real-time kinetic measurements to be made that quantify the interactions of molecules and is compatible with most biomolecular systems. Importantly, the newer system provides results up to eight times faster than a single-needle system. A wide array of conditions can also be tested in parallel to speed up assay development.

‘Adding the additional Biacore 8K system ensures rapid turnaround of experiments,’ says Dr Scott Pollack, Associate Director of Biophysics. ‘We continue to invest in high-quality biophysical characterisation capability to accelerate drug discovery, for the benefit of our clients and their future patients.’

‘The new Biacore 8K improves capacity for biophysics-centric projects as well as supporting integrated projects where data can be used to drive chemistry developments in real-time’ commented Dr Aaron Horsey, Senior Scientist at Sygnature.

If you have any question, would like to discuss biophysics or drug discovery in general, we’d love to hear from you. You can get in touch by using any of the contact forms.