Ozone launches breakthrough Protein Sequencer in India

Hyderabad, Oct 29 (UNI) The Ozone Group, a pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare provider, today announced the launch of what it claims India's 'first' Protein Sequencer, a breakthrough technology in protein science leading to advances in drug development.

The Protein Sequencer, claimed to be 60 times faster than 'any existing protein sequencer in the world', was developed under the Ozone Research Frontier (ORF) in the U S, the R and D division of the Ozone group. Protein sequencer, an instrument used to determine the sequence of amino acids in a protein, worked by tagging and removing a amino acid at a time, which was then analysed and identified.

The prototype of protein would be displayed at Analytica Anacon India 2007, an international Biotech exhibition for analytical instrumentation, life sciences, laboratory technology and services, starting from October 31 at the Hitex exhibition centre here.

The equipment cost would be around US Dollar 80,000 and the first prototype would be available in the market by February 2008. The company intended to assemble the unit at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh, Group Chairman S C Sehgal told the media here.

The ORF team was headed by Dr Bakshy Chibber, Research Associate Professor in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame.

According to Dr Chibber, ''the methodology of the new protein sequencer is based on new patented chemistry and the ORF machine is 60 times more efficient than present machines as it can identify 12 protein sequences in ten minutes.'' Presence or absence of proteins in the human body was the reason for disease occurrence and the study of the protein structure and its function through the protein sequencer could lead to the development of drugs and treatments for numerous disorders.

The worldwide market for Protein Sequencer was around US Dollar 20 billion and the Indian market was about Rs 50-70 crore.

UNI