Presented by
Thomas Frischmuth
Nominated by
BASF Venture Capital GmbH
For almost all living organisms, DNA is the central molecule of life. DNA is the carrier of our genetic information, which is encoded in just the four nucleobases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). DNA is translated into RNA (made of the corresponding ribonucleosides A, C, G, and uracil (U), which is later translated into proteins. The detection of DNA and RNA as well as the design of new therapeutics that interact specifically with DNA or RNA thus play a central role in scientific research and development of diagnostics and new potential drugs.
In this sense, baseclick has invented a technology and products for the easy and robust labeling of nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, by the use of the so-called click chemistry, one of the easiest and most efficient bioconjugation methods known so far. The general idea was born from Nobel prize awarded researcher Barry Sharpless (Nobel Prizes 2001) and Mortal Meldal among others in 2001. Besides a worldwide exclusive license of the click chemistry patent (from The Scripps Institute) for the nucleic acid market (research and diagnostic), baseclick has developed own IP around this core in order to allow for most flexible and efficient DNA functionalization.
This type of reaction opens the way to modify nucleic acids at any position with practically any marker molecule. Therefore, the design of nucleic acid therapeutics or diagnostics comes into reach due to baseclick GmbH.