Molecular Insight has developed proprietary platform technologies that allow radiochemistry to be integrated into the medicinal chemistry stage of drug discovery. As such, libraries of compounds can be screened which are chemically or structurally equivalent to radiolabeled compounds. This integrated approach allows for both the rapid synthesis, screening and deconvolution of large numbers of compounds, while ensuring that the radiolabeling platform is compatible with subsequent development and manufacturing activities.
Molecular Insight’s core proprietary technologies include Ultratrace™ technology and SAAC™ technology. These technologies drive development of our current portfolio and will enable the discovery and development of future molecular imaging pharmaceuticals and targeted radiotherapeutic candidates. Our core proprietary technologies, applied independently and together, include:
- Ultratrace™ Technology
- SAAC™ Technology
- SAACQ™ Technology
- Nanotrace™ Discovery
Ultratrace™ Technology
Our Ultratrace technology is a proprietary solid-phase radiolabeling technology that enables the development of ultrapure radiopharmaceuticals which are devoid of unnecessary cold contaminants, thereby enhancing safety, specificity and potency. Cold contaminants are nonradioactive, or unlabeled targeting molecules, which may potentially induce unnecessary side effects and suboptimal efficacy by competing with radiolabeled targeting molecules for binding to a limited numbers of receptor target sites.
SAAC™ Technology
The ability to reliably and robustly incorporate medically useful radioactive metals into biologically relevant targeting molecules is critical to the design of effective radiopharmaceuticals for molecular imaging and targeted radiotherapy. Single Amino Acid Chelate, or SAAC, is our unique metal binding chemistry platform technology. It represents a new family of compounds with superior metal binding properties for leading radionuclides used for molecular imaging and radiotherapy, namely technetium-99m, rhenium-186 and rhenium-188. This technology incorporates a metal binding, or chelating, group that can rapidly and efficiently bind to technetium or rhenium for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, and an amino acid portion that allows it to be incorporated into any peptide sequence through the use of conventional peptide chemistry.
SAACQ™ Technology
Two widely employed techniques for visualizing specific biological processes are fluorescence microscopy and radioisotope imaging. Different from current technologies, our new fluorescence-based technology called SAACQ enables the visualization of radiopharmaceuticals interacting with cellular structures. This advanced technology promises to accelerate the development of targeted radiotherapeutics and molecular imaging pharmaceuticals by allowing live cell activity to be viewed by fluorescent microscopy.
Nanotrace™ Discovery
Our Nanotrace Discovery targeting platform technology allows for the rapid creation and screening of new leads for molecular targeting of disease. We believe that we can utilize this technology to create libraries of radiolabeled compounds in a relatively short period of time. Nanotrace Discovery is applicable to major disease categories such as cardiovascular disease, oncology and neurology.