Sangamo BioSciences, Inc announced that the company has been awarded an Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant to conduct research on a novel application of Sangamo's zinc finger DNA binding protein transcription factor (ZFP TF) technology. The grant, worth $2 million, was awarded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and will be paid out over a 3-year period.

The proposal was written to support research into the design and use of multiunit ZFP TFs that would bind to and specifically regulate the expression of several genes simultaneously. This may be useful in situations where regulating several genes involved in a process or pathway is required to evoke a relevant biological response.

"Our ZFP TF technology uniquely enables us to create highly specific proteins capable of directly regulating genes that are involved in key biological pathways and processes," said Casey Case, Sangamo's vice president, research operations and the principal investigator on this grant. "Now we hope to extend this capability and design individual ZFP TFs that regulate multiple genes in a specific, targeted fashion. We believe that this may have useful applications in situations that require the coordinate regulation of multiple individual genes encoding proteins that, for example, act as a complex or catalyze key rate-limiting steps in an enzymatic pathway. "

"This is Sangamo's third ATP grant," said Edward Lanphier, Sangamo's president and chief executive officer. "Our success in accessing funding from this highly competitive and prestigious program has enabled us to rapidly and efficiently advance our core technology activities."

Zinc finger DNA-binding proteins are the predominant class of naturally occurring transcription factors in organisms from yeast to humans. Transcription factors bind to DNA to regulate gene expression. ZFP's can be engineered to precisely target a particular gene of interest. Sangamo BioSciences is developing engineered ZFPs for both targeted gene regulation and gene correction.