Product Development Sanquin Reagents
Contact person: Roel Melsert MSc
Sanquin Reagents develops a broad range of blood grouping and immunology reagents for laboratories, including several innovative products for diagnostic use and for clinical research. These reagents are available worldwide through a network of distributors, and bulk reagents for manufacturing are supplied directly from Amsterdam.
The Reagents Unit is ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 certified and is committed to introduce new products on a continuous basis. New products are the outcome of R&D projects, some of which are executed in close collaboration with departments within Sanquin and/or with other companies and institutions.
Our activities:
Collaborations
Sanquin Reagents collaborations with The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and the Netherlands Vaccine Institute (NVI) to develop and use new immunotechnological tools for the identification of T-cell epitopes. These technologies can be used in studies to examine T-cell function in viral infections and tumor growth, including vaccine R&D and immunomonitoring in clinical studies of new or existing immunotherapies.
Inventor award
Sanquin Blood Supply and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI-AVL) were the winners of the 2010 Amsterdam Inventor Award for their inventions addressing ’T-cell Epitope Selection and Monitoring‘.
In a co-operation between the groups of prof. Ton Schumacher (NKI-AVL), dr. Huib Ovaa (NKI-AVL), and dr. Wim van Esch (Sanquin) two new technologies have been developed to address these issues comprising:
- A pHLA Exchange Technology that allows production of thousands of different pHLA-I complexes to be used to visualize killer T cells of interest.
- A Multiplexed T cell Imaging Technology that allows to simultaneously detection of very many T-cell populations in a single patient sample.
R&D projects
The project portfolio in 2010 consisted of ongoing projects in the fields of blood grouping and immunology reagents.
Development projects started or continued in 2010:
- CTMM project: design and use of enhanced T-cell antigens and T-cell detection technology for human disease (‘AmpVacs’).
- MHC monomer-/multimer production and staining of antigen specific T-cells by multiplex FACS combicoding using fluorescent labels.
- Poolcell and elution kit, a.o. projects in the field of immunohematology.
Products and patents
New products
The following new products were commercially introduced in 2010:
- Latex-based assays to quantify human IgG subclass species in blood for the Immage instrument.
- Latex-based assays to detect free, human immunoglobulin light chains (kappa, lambda) in blood, for the Siemens BN instruments.
Patents
Ongoing patent applications:
- Cleavable peptides in MHC class I molecules
- Multiplex PCR & specific DNA sequences that are used in the blood grouping chip
- Detection of antigen-specific T-cell responses.
New patent application: immunogenic restricted peptides with increased efficacy.
Quality system
Two ISO certificates, ISO 9001 & ISO 13485, are valid until July 2011.
More information may be found on the Sanquin Reagents Home Page