Belgian university and biotech firm develop immune response test

Ghent, Belgium's Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and local biotechnology firm AlgoNomics have agreed a joint venture to develop a technology to verify whether certain proteins trigger an immune response in humans. A biological test to supplement existing comupter simulations has already been discovered thanks to the Belgian partnership.

In a joint statement, the VIB and AlgoNomics said that the additional data from the new biological test "enable a more precise determination of the immune response." The partners add: "this knowledge is important for the development of new medicines, because it indicates that a new therapeutic substance is ready to be tested on humans."

The computer simulation offered by AlgoNomics called Epibase can reportedly predict whether or not a particular protein will trigger the activation of human T-cells. The software even does this "for proteins for which little or no experimental data are available," according to the firm.