Investment

1. What is FREMSA?

   It stands for a technique for "Fluorescence-based Real-time Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay" and is currently at an advanced stage of development.

2. What problem or problems does this technique solve?

   Electrophoresis is a very popular technique for analyzing nucleic-acids (DNA/RNA) and proteins in the fields of biomedicine and biotechnology. With FREMSA developed by Viagene, the entire electrophoretic process can be monitored in real-time, data can be recorded any time during analysis, and any problems with the operation can be found at a very early stage, thus reducing costs and costly delays before it is determined that the assay needs to be re-run under different conditions or can be terminated after a much shorter time. Furthermore, the same apparatus and operating procedure can be applied for replacing conventional EMSA, Southern/Northern blotting, or Western blotting analyses. Because of the omission of blotting (transfer of samples from gel to a bonding membrane) and subsequent procedures, in addition to the savings on materials, results can be obtained much more rapidly and economically. Elimination of radioisotope usage also makes FREMSA safer and more environment-friendly.

3. How does FREMSA solve the problems?

   Performing FREMSA requires an apparatus providing real-time display of fluorescent molecules and a procedure to set up reactions for forming protein/protein, antibody/antigen, nucleic-acids/nucleic-acids or protein/nucleic-acid complexes before electrophoresis. Once targeted molecules form complexes with fluorescence-labeled protein, antibody, antigen or a DNA/RNA probe, the complexes should have larger size and will move slower than the free (unbound) molecule during gel electrophoresis. Because the specificity of the antibody or the sequence of DNA/RNA used as the probe are known, the targeting molecule, thus, can be identified rapidly by FREMSA. The principle of FREMSA is similar to that of conventional EMSA, however, FREMSA can be used not only for detecting DNA/RNA binding proteins, but also for protein/protein interaction or nucleic-acid hybridization. When FREMSA is used for replacing conventional EMSA, the results can be obtained in hours, rather than days.

    

   * This design and technology are patent pending.

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