Martinsried/Munich (Germany) June 24, 2004
MorphoSys AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: MOR; Prime Standard Segment) announced today that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has granted a new patent on its proprietary CysDisplay™ screening technology. CysDisplay™ is an important component of MorphoSys’s proprietary HuCAL GOLD® technology, and the new patent provides additional protection for the same. The new patent (US 6,753,136) entitled 'Novel methods for displaying (poly)peptides/proteins on bacteriophage particles via disulfide bonds' describes a selection technology based on phage display for selecting high affinity antibodies. Additional patent applications are pending in other jurisdictions around the world.In November 2001 MorphoSys released its most recent and advanced version of the proprietary antibody library, HuCAL GOLD®. In addition to several significant improvements to the library, CysDisplay™ screening technology was also incorporated into the technology. The resulting library, in comparison to previous HuCAL® versions and to other phage display based antibody libraries, possesses several unique advantages. One such advantage is the ability to standardize protocols relating to antibody fragment recovery from each screening round, thus making the technology ideally suited for high throughput applications.
“The CysDisplay™ screening technology is another important addition to our portfolio of antibody library technologies. It contributes significant advantages over previous methods we have employed, and further differentiates our product mix”, commented Dr. Simon Moroney, Chief Executive Officer of MorphoSys AG.