Gateway beckons for research centres

Invitrogen Corporation has entered into new licensing agreements to supply its Gateway Technology and clones to major genomic research centres on two continents.

These include Open Biosystems, a US-based distributor of genomic and proteomic research products; the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the national organisation funded by the UK government to promote medical research; and RZPD, or Ressourcenzentrum fur Genomforschung, the not-for-profit German service centre for genomics and proteomics research, which has one of the largest clone collections in the world.

Gateway Technology provides a platform that allows a single entry clone to be inserted into as many expression vectors as needed to study its function in a variety of ways without repeating the initial cloning. This reduces the possibility of errors and inconsistencies between studies, and more importantly accelerates research. With these new agreements, Gateway is now being used by more than 80% of the world's major clone distributors, enabling commercial distribution of Gateway clones developed by academic and government researchers worldwide.

'Invitrogen's policy will help researchers, laboratories and research institutions to share some of the basic tools of post-genomic biological research,' said Dr Martin Yuille, chief scientist at MRC geneservice. 'Gateway Technology is a flexible method for cloning and subcloning. I am pleased we are now able to distribute these clones globally and so help accelerate progress.'

The "open architecture" policy announced last November allows government and academic researchers to create and distribute clones made with Gateway Technology without royalties or licensing fees.

'As more institutions move toward adopting Gateway Technology for their research initiatives, we understand that making this prevailing technology even more accessible is imperative to our business,' explained Gregory Lucier, chairman and ceo of Invitrogen. 'The Gateway open architecture was the start of our drive toward streamlining access to key industry technologies, and more will follow as we continue to play our part as the preeminent partner in research.'