New startup Spear Bio plans to commercialize ultra-sensitive protein detection technology from Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Spear Bio, headquartered in Boston, has entered into an exclusive global agreement with Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development to license DNA nanotechnology-driven Sequential Proximity Extension Amplification Reaction (SPEAR).
[Image courtesy of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]
Harvard said in a press release that Spear Bio will develop a reagent-based platform for ultra-sensitive protein detection in small volume samples, with an initial focus on only Applications for research.
The first effort will be to commercialize a test that uses a drop of blood or other biological fluids to measure neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. Measuring these antibodies can help understand protective immunity and vaccine efficacy, and measuring them in small samples could enable new research and diagnostics.
“The extremely high sensitivity provided by SPEAR from extremely small sample volumes, and the fact that it can be read using common quantitative PCR equipment, offers the unique potential to create microsampling-based in vitro diagnostics that could transform academic and clinical research in multiple disease areas. Clinical studies,” Spear Bio co-founder and chief technology officer Feng Xuan said in the release.
Feng Xuan developed the technology with co-inventors Cherry Fan and Yu Wang. Wang is now acting director of application development at Spear Bio. They are all members of the group of Peng Yin, a core faculty member at Wysham.
"SPEAR was invented as a result of key advances in DNA nanotechnology that we have made at Wyss over the years, including the provision and signal-dependent synthesis of readable DNA sequences," said Yin, who is also a co-founder of Spear Bio. "The assay platform that Feng Xuan built, then worked with other members of the lab to significantly reduce risk, now has great potential to develop immunoassay products for clinical research and in vitro diagnostics."
Yin is among other startups using Harvard-licensed technology Founders, among others, are 3EO Health, which is commercializing an at-home PCR-grade COVID testing system.
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