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INNOVATION
Universal biosensors of GPCR activity
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Market Maturity: Business Ready
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Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as addressing the needs of existing markets and existing customers. Learn more
Women-led innovation
A woman had a leadership role in developing this innovation in at least one of the Key Innovator organisations listed below.
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Prepare for Market entry
  • Secure capital
  • Scale-up market opportunities
Location of Key Innovators developing this innovation
Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

The UN explains: "Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers responsible for child and maternal mortality.

Major progress has also been made on increasing access to clean water and sanitation, reducing malaria, tuberculosis, polio and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

However, many more efforts are needed to control a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 9
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

The UN explains: "Investments in infrastructure – transport, irrigation, energy and information and communication technology – are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. It has long been recognized that growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes require investment in infrastructure."

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon Europe project UniSens with an end date of 31/10/2027
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project UniSens
This project by a consortium of academic labs and small biotech companies concerns a new key innovation for the development of drugs targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are the most important class of therapeutic targets, both for current drugs and those under development, covering about a third of the €1.2 trillion pharmaceutical market. Recent research has revealed that GPCRs do not function as simple on/off switches but instead can adopt multiple conformations leading to complex textures of downstream effects. Functionally selective drugs modulate the GPCR structure to stimulate certain downstream pathways over others. In the search for this next generation of better drugs, the pharmaceutical industry currently employs multiple (10+) distinct GPCR assays, performed in non-identical cellular contexts, and misleading readouts from this approach contribute significantly to costly drug failure. Here we propose a radically new single-assay technology platform that will enable detection and functional classification of drug candidates with superior confidence compared to today's approaches. Its unique design supports streamlined drug discovery from the test tube to the native disease-relevant cell, as well as the capacity to efficiently harness artificial intelligence (AI) in the design of better drugs. The technology is based upon highly informative fluorescent sensor reagents that react to different receptor conformations with subtle, flexible changes in their structure. In this Pathfinder project, our main objective is to demonstrate that the conformational fingerprints generated by these sensors correlate to specific cellular signalling profiles, i.e. GPCR activity states (proof of principle). We believe that the UniSens platform will become the standard tool for early drug development and could be a game-changer in the search for safer, more effective drugs.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 24/01/2025.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 132693