License for use of iBodies® to measure free testosterone in blood
IOCB Prague, the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IMC), and Charles University have signed a licensing agreement with the company Immunotech, a member of the Beckman Coulter group, for the use of iBodies®, a joint technology for measuring free testosterone in blood.
iBodies were developed by Pavel Šácha, Tomáš Knedlík, and others in our group in collaboration with the team of Vladimír Šubr of the Department of Biomedical Polymers, headed by Tomáš Etrych, at IMC. iBodies comprise a polymer backbone with a small organic molecule bound to it that can bind to the target receptor of tested cells. A component of the complex is a molecule that serves as an anchor for use in various separation techniques and, in some cases, also a fluorescent label facilitating imaging of iBodies with various laboratory methods. All this together gives the technology considerable potential for use in clinical laboratories, either as substitutes for nonsynthetic antibodies that are otherwise not readily available, or as tracers for measurement.
The new iBodies provide an alternative to the radioactive tracer method, thus simplifying the measurement of free testosterone in clinical laboratories.