OGS: Covering the 2-D space

Proteomics encompasses a number of technologies all designed to look at the same thing - the complete set of proteins expressed by a cell or tissue of interest. Thus even though Oxford GlycoSciences plc has announced a broad U.S. patent covering its automated proteomics system, that intellectual property is unlikely to cover all proteomics approaches.

Oxford GlycoSciences (LSE:OGS, Oxford, U.K.) last week said it received U.S. Patent No. 6,064,754 covering computer-assisted methods and apparatus for identification and characterization of biomolecules in a biological sample. According to CEO Michael Kranda, the patent covers "how we make images, the algorithms, and the robotics to automate high throughput proteomics. The automation step had not been active before, because it was too difficult. We've solved the problem and invented a technology to image, assess, isolate and recover proteins. This is a very broad patent and is going to be hard to circumvent."...