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UPDATE: nplex biosciences has been renamed to Nomic. Check out their new website at:听

91社区 and CQDM announced today that a collaborative project between 91社区 and nplex biosciences to further develop a highly-scalable protein detection method, termed the 鈥渘ELISA鈥�, has been selected for funding by CQDM. The research team will receive a $1,000,000 grant for one year through the CQDM Quantum Leap program. Contributing to the CQDM grant are GlaxoSmithKline, nplex biosciences, 91社区鈥檚 Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives initiative, and the Qu茅bec Minist猫re de l鈥櫭塩onomie et de l鈥橧nnovation.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of intensifying our support to the life sciences industry, a major sector of Quebec's economy. I believe that scientific research and innovation are instrumental for an economic recovery. For this reason, the Government of Qu茅bec is contributing $376,000 to the development of the nELISA platform, whose multiple applications will help us fight against the coronavirus," said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of the Economy and Innovation and Minister responsible for Lanaudi猫re.

鈥淭he need for developing scalable protein detection technologies is pressing, as the world contends with multiple health concerns, particularly related to our aging populations,鈥� said Dr. David Juncker, Professor, Department Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Principal Investigator on the grant. 鈥淭he nELISA will allow us to more easily measure biology, like having a high-resolution telescope that can quickly scan the skies for phenomena no one has seen before.鈥�

The immunoassay market is estimated to reach $18 billion USD by 2025^[1], but current technologies 鈥� derived from enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) 鈥� have severe trade-offs in speed, volume and/or accuracy that preclude their use for comprehensive protein analysis in high-throughput studies. nplex, a 91社区 spin-off, is commercializing the nELISA, a technology with the potential to transcend traditional technology trade-offs by simultaneously achieving high multiplexing, high-throughput, and high-sensitivity, while at the same time being cost effective.

鈥淲orking closely with our collaborators at GSK and 91社区 ensures that what we鈥檙e building is immediately deployable in high-throughput screening workflows,鈥� said Dr. Milad Dagher, CEO and Co-Founder of nplex biosciences. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a good first step, but it only scratches the surface of what鈥檚 possible with the nELISA 鈥� our goal is to replace and consolidate the broad range of legacy immunoassay toolkits that scientists use today with a broadly applicable platform that can carry the science end-to-end, from discovery all the way to the clinic.鈥�

鈥淐QDM is proud to fund the development of the nELISA platform and support the growth of nplex biosciences as they work to provide an innovative platform to accelerate biopharmaceutical drug discovery.鈥� said Jesse Paterson, CQDM鈥檚 Senior Director, Business development. 鈥淭he Quantum Leap program highlights CQDM's ability to assemble financing from a variety of organizations in the life science ecosystem and to support the translation of early-stage research by fostering collaborations between academic, biotech and pharmaceutical research partners鈥�

Building on the advantages that make the sandwich ELISA a gold standard, the nELISA leverages nanotechnology to achieve unprecedented scalability through miniaturization and parallelization. The nELISA shrinks all of the components of the traditional ELISA onto micron-sized beads, enabling many different nELISA assays to be multiplexed together with zero cross-talk - a major bottleneck until now. nELISA beads are also engineered to be uniquely color coded, an aspect that ultimately enables fast, reliable, and low-cost readout using flow cytometry equipment commonly found in research labs.

In this project, the nELISA will be used to profile the level of 150 key cytokines in 15,000 cell-derived samples, generating >2 million protein data points and demonstrating the utility of the nELISA as a high content screening technology. These tests will allow GSK to pilot the nELISA in several HTS projects, with additional testing for neurological applications to be conducted at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) by Dr. Thomas Durcan and Dr. Ted Fon. Their team will run 5,000 assays to assess the impact of 1,200 different drugs on astrocytes (a fundamental class of human neural cells), which have been generated from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSCs) derived from Parkinson鈥檚 disease patients at The Neuro.

Whereas the 150-plex nELISA developed in this project is anticipated to bring new capabilities to drug discovery, it may also provide support in the fight against COVID-19 by giving researchers a new tool to understand cytokine storm and antibody-dependent enhancement, two cytokine-dependent phenomena at the heart of COVID-19 disease biology and vaccine efficacy. Dagher noted that nplex is also working with academic and clinical collaborators in the Montreal region to develop a high-specificity COVID-19 serology test based on the nELISA that could be deployed at scale on cytometers in clinical settings.

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About 91社区

Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, 91社区 is a leading Canadian post-secondary institution. It has two campuses, 11 faculties, 11 professional schools, 300 programs of study and some 38,000 students, including 8,800 graduate students. 91社区 attracts students from over 150 countries around the world, with more than 7,700 international students making up 20 percent of the student body. Almost half of 91社区 students claim a first language other than English, including 38 per cent who claim French as their first language.

About Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives

Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives (HBHL) aims to accelerate translational discoveries and create a global centre of excellence in neuroinformatics at 91社区. Supported by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Quebec鈥檚 Minist猫re de l'脡conomie et de l'Innovation and the Fonds de recherche du Qu茅bec (FRQS, FRQSC and FRQNT), HBHL builds on 91社区鈥檚 scientific excellence and global leadership in areas of neuroscience that hold great promise for delivering implementable, clinically effective outcomes in brain and mental health.

About nplex biosciences

nplex is developing a high-throughput proteomics platform for population-wide discovery. nplex was started by researchers at 91社区 working together to untangle some of the most difficult problems in proteomics and meet the demand of high-throughput biology. Today, nplex鈥檚 team is focusing on precision profiling the human secretome to provide a complementary and orthogonal read-out within modern drug discovery pipelines.

About CQDM

CQDM is a biopharma-based research consortium created in 2008 with the mission to fund the development of innovative technologies to accelerate the discovery and development of drugs and vaccines. Its business model is based on a collaborative approach bringing together world-leading pharmaceutical organizations, Canadian biotech companies as well as the Canadian and Quebec governments who share the costs of the research. CQDM uses this leverage to reduce the risks inherent to early-stage biopharmaceutical research. In doing so, CQDM bridges the funding gap needed to drive innovation across the academic and private sectors, especially where early-stage research is concerned. CQDM receives contributions from Quebec鈥檚 Ministry of Economy and Innovation (MEI), from large pharmaceutical companies, and from the Government of Canada under the Business-Led Networks of Centres of Excellence Program (BL-NCE). For more information: