Partnership to Provide Structural Biology Services

FEI has established a strategic partnership enabling  CRO NovAliX to provide commercial cryo-electron microscopy (EM)-based structural analysis services to its customers in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. NovAliX has integrated a cryo-EM workflow based on a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The collaboration combines application, training, and support with on-site personnel from FEI.

“There is a growing demand for structural studies from the pharmaceutical industry, driven by the need for a deeper scientific understanding and also because of stronger regulatory constraints. In the field of biologics, EM analysis has proven to be capable of delivering critical information for antibody selection, epitope mapping and formulation. As for small molecules research programs, cryo-EM can be uniquely valuable to obtain structural information on multi-protein complexes or membrane proteins, which is key to understanding the structure-function relationship,” said Denis Zeyer, CEO, NovAliX.

TEM-based structural analysis has emerged as an important complementary technique to traditional methods, such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Although TEM lacks the atomic-scale resolution of those techniques, it can look at a broader range of structures under conditions much closer to the native intracellular environment.

Peter Fruhstorfer, vice president and general manager of FEI’s Life Sciences Business added: “We are extremely pleased to be able to work with a leading contract research organisation like NovAliX. The power and value of cryo-EM based structural analysis is evident from the quality of recent publications by academic and industry researchers. This collaboration with NovAliX is an important step in the broader commercialisation and industrialisation of the technology.”