Fleet Contribute to New World Patent for Anaesthetic Immunoassay

Most of Fleet Bioprocessing Ltd.'s work is carried out under confidentiality agreements for commercial partners, therefore it never sees the light of day in publications. So we like to publicise it when our work does enter the public domain.

Recently Fleet have been part of a team working with Somnus Scientific, Life Science Group, Creonate Manufacturing and AccentBio to develop immunoassays for propofol, which is a commonly-used anaesthetic for hospital procedures. It is administered intravenously and because individual patients may metabolise this agent at different rates, it can be very important to monitor the level of propofol in the patient's bloodstream. This is particularly the case when it is used in total intravenous anaesthesia (TIVA), an increasingly popular approach which employs a single intravenous agent for the entire procedure. TIVA can cause less patient side-effects than traditional approaches which involve the inhalation of volatile agents.

In response to a lack of methods for monitoring propofol in the bloodstream, Somnus Scientific developed novel antibodies to propofol and used these as the basis of new propofol assays and sensors. On 27th February this year, a World Patent was granted to protect these inventions (WO 2025/040637) and we are proud that Fleet's Chemistry Director Chris Blencowe is named as one of the inventors. Chris and the team developed the immunogens which were used to create unique new propofol antibodies, a crucial milestone in the project.

Fleet Bioprocessing Ltd. has decades of experience in creating immunogens for challenging antibody generation programs, and we are always happy to talk about this topic!