JPT Peptide Technologies and The Institute for Medical Immunology at the Charité in Berlin Announce Collaboration on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH (JPT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BioNTech AG (Mainz, Germany), and The Institute for Medical Immunology at the Charité in Berlin today announced a collaborative agreement on the development of serological peptide markers for the differential diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

“The previous success of our peptide microarray platform technology in identifying seromarkers in HIV, autoimmune diseases and cancer has led to this exciting opportunity to use our arrays to systematically explore other indications with high and unmet diagnostic and therapeutic need.”

CFS is a debilitating and complex disorder characterized by profound fatigue. Symptoms affect several body systems, frequently resulting in broadly reduced participation in daily activities. Definitive diagnosis of CFS is difficult and a diagnostic test is not available. Currently, diagnosis of CFS is achieved through the process of eliminating other diseases that have chronic fatigue as a symptom.

The goal of the partnership is to combine the long term expertise at the Charité Clinics for Immune Deficiencies in diagnosing CFS patients with JPT’s high-content peptide microarray approach to discover seromarkers that enable the development of a diagnostic test system.

Prof. Carmen Scheibenbogen, the project team head at the Charité stated: “Our previous and ongoing research at The Institute for Medical Immunology indicates a chronic activation of the immune system for a portion of our CFS patients. Preliminary results using JPT’s peptide microarray technology let us hope to find distinct serological markers that allow better diagnosis and treatment of CFS patients in the future.”

Holger Wenschuh, CEO at JPT adds, “The previous success of our peptide microarray platform technology in identifying seromarkers in HIV, autoimmune diseases and cancer has led to this exciting opportunity to use our arrays to systematically explore other indications with high and unmet diagnostic and therapeutic need.”

The collaboration project is supported in part by Pro FIT, a funding program of the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) and by the European Union (EFRE).

About JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH

JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH is an DIN ISO 9001:2008 certified research and development partner and innovative service provider for peptide related projects. JPT’s key technologies SPOT^TM – for ultra-high-throughput peptide synthesis and screening, PepStar^TM – for high-content peptide microarrays, PepTrack^TM - for flexible peptide library assembly, PepMix^TM – for antigen specific T-cell stimulation using peptide pools, and SpikeTides^TM – for protein biomarker quantification accelerate research and development in areas such as immune monitoring, vaccine development, peptide biomarker discovery, peptide lead identification and optimization, enzyme profiling and proteomics.

About The Institute of Medical Immunology

The Institute of Medical Immunology at the Charité focuses on the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies of immune mediated diseases based on an improved understanding of its pathogenesis. In our outpatient clinic we take care of adult patients with immune deficiencies who frequently suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome.