The US-based protein purification technology developer shifted its manufacturing base to North Carolina two years ago and has now secured three licences from NC State.
US-based protein purification technology developer LigaTrap Technologies has raised $1.5m in funding since 2016 and has now licensed three biopharmaceutical research patents from North Carolina State University (NC State), WRALTechWire reported on Monday.
The identity of the backers and the timing of the investments have not been disclosed.
The licences augment LigaTrap’s range of purification resins, used to help isolate proteins and antibodies from complex mixtures for research, therapeutic and diagnostic purposes.
The additional patents commercialise work by Ruben Carbonell and Stefano Menegatti from NC State’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
LigaTrap reportedly shifted manufacturing and research to North Carolina in 2016 from what remains its corporate headquarters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The North Carolina operation is co-located with ImmunoReagents, an NC State-incubated antibody and reagent manufacturer that appears to have agreed to market LigaTrap’s separators in 2015.
Earlier funding details could not be ascertained for LigaTrap, which seems to be a rebranded ProteoVec, a name it held until the ImmunoReagents partnership.
Tee Bordelon, chief scientific officer of LigaTrap, said: “We are very excited about our recent licensing agreement with NC State and believe that these patents are a perfect complement to our existing intellectual property (IP) strategy.
“The additional IP will allow us a greater flexibility and capability to deliver a more diverse and robust portfolio of affinity purification resins to market.”
