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Unlocking first-in-class biologics with genetics-inspired functional screening at scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
Curious minds welcome!
Does Heligenics create gene therapies? Heligenics does not perform genetic engineering on humans, animals, or patients. Instead, we create large DNA-based libraries of biologic variants—engineered at the molecular level—and test how they function using in vitro fluorescent assays in human cells. This approach allows us to assess how amino acid changes, structural features, and post-translational modifications impact biologic activity, all within a human cellular environment.
What does the Heligenics GigaAssay™ do? The GigaAssay™ technology is a massively parallel method to generate over a million variants in any region of the genome and analyze the effect of each variant on a specific cell and/or molecular function.
What is a MEGA-Map™? A MEGA-Map™ measures the impact of amino acid substitutions in the target protein upon its molecular function or a cellular process in human cells.
How can the Heligenics technology help a drug discovery effort? In drug discovery, the GigaAssayâ„¢ and MEGA-Mapsâ„¢ can discover new biologics, improve lead screening, evaluate derivative compounds, optimize clinical trial design, and discover new resistance mutations. Learn more about Heligenics
Aren’t there other drug discovery tools that are similar? A commonly used tool in drug discovery, phage display, is a bacterial peptide expression system used for determining high-binding protein sequences. Developed in the mid-1980s, currently, this technique and yeast display are currently used for engineered antibody fragment selection. The only function phage display can assay for is the binding of an antibody fragment to an epitope, one of many different protein functions for which the GigaAssay™ can be used.
How can Heligenics technology be used to improve diagnostic tests? Many genetic tests, whether for inherited disease or somatic mutations in cancer, have naturally occurring mutations with unknown significance for pathology. With the GigaAssayâ„¢, the functional impact of previously detected Variants of Unknown Significance (VUS) can be defined with high precision.
Can a GigaAssayâ„¢ be applied to regions of the genome outside protein-coding regions? Yes, the GigaAssayâ„¢ can be applied to investigate the impact of all mutations in a gene promoter region or any other untranslated regions of the genome.
What in particular does the GigaAssayâ„¢ measure? The GigaAssayâ„¢ is a flexible platform that can measure a wide variety of molecular functions of a given target protein or genetic sequence. For example, it can be used to measure DNA repair, cell division, signal transduction, phosphorylation events, or apoptosis, to name a few.
How accurate is the GigaAssayâ„¢? We have analyzed multiple genes with multiple approaches, such as comparison to true positives and true negatives in the literature, nonsense mutations, and benchmark data determined in-house by gold-standard techniques. We consistently measure an accuracy of about 95% and positive predictive values (PPV) close to 100%. Each activity is assigned a p-value to evaluate confidence in our measurements.
​​​​​​Are there any jobs at Heligenics? Heligenics is in a growth phase and frequently hires.
How can I invest in your company? Please submit a request form through the contact tab of our website. Heligenics is no longer taking Angel investment.
​​What is your policy for Financial Conflict of Interest? See the FCOI page.