Licensing Program

Public Health Research Institute Properties, Inc. (PHRI) offers non-exclusive worldwide licenses for the molecular beacons technology in a variety of fields and for a variety of uses. A license under PHRI's patents includes rights to seven different patents and patent applications and further improvements to the technology. These patents can be viewed and printed. Issued claims describe molecular beacon probes, kits, and assays. Patents that cover additional aspects of molecular beacons technology are pending. Foreign counterparts are issued or pending in Australia, Canada, China, Europe and Japan. Licensing income received by PHRI is used to support further research. Also, a license creates a collaborative relationship with the laboratory of Drs. Fred Russell Kramer, Sanjay Tyagi, and Salvatore Marras, the inventors of the technology.

For more information on the molecular beacons licensing program, please contact Dr. Fred Russell Kramer (fred.kramer@umdnj.edu; 1-973-854-3370.)

Products and Assays that Utilize Molecular Beacons Technology

Custom molecular beacon probes
Assay kits
Performance of assays for a fee
Performance of assays for internal quality control
Assay instruments

Fields of Use for Molecular Beacons Technology

Human in vitro diagnostics
a. Testing for infectious agents
b. Genetic testing
c. Oncology
Research
GMO testing
Food testing
Veterinary diagnostics
Hybrid seed production
Agricultural infectious agents
Forensics
Paternity testing
High-density probe arrays
Industrial microbiology
Blood products quality control
Environmental pathogens

The fields of use are not limited to this list. New applications and fields for molecular beacons arise frequently.

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Recent Publications

In the February issue of Bioconjugate Chemistry, we report the development of luminescent probes for the detection of nucleic acids

Krasnoperov LN, Marras SAE, Kozlov M, Wirpsza L, and Mustaev A (2010) Luminescent probes for ultrasensitive detection of nucleic acids. Bioconjugate Chemistry 21, 319 - 327.

In collaboration with our colleagues Soumitesh Chakravorty and David Alland, we developed an assay which utilizes sloppy molecular beacon probes for the identification of more than 110 different pathogenic bacterial genotypes

Chakravorty S, Aladegbami B, Burday M, Levi M, Marras SAE, Shah D, El-Hajj HH, Kramer FR, and Alland D (2010) Rapid universal diagnosis of bacterial pathogens from clinical cultures using a novel sloppy molecular beacon melting temperature signature technique. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 48, 258-267.