COBHAM, United Kingdom—Proteome Sciences has announced thesigning of a technology agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., worth atotal of $2.1 million, for the development of advanced methods to profilechanges in key cancer pathways. Under the terms of the agreement, ProteomeSciences will grant Thermo Fisher access to its patents for a three-stage massspectrometry fragmentation methodology for improved analysis and accuracy. Inreturn, Proteome Sciences will receive cash as well as a no-cost lease fromThermo Fisher for mass spectrometry equipment for Proteome Sciences to developthe pathway assays. Proteome Sciences will also continue to develop advanced20- and 30-plex Tandem Mass Tags for Thermo Fisher for the next additions tothe Tandem Mass Tags product range.
"Our agreement with Thermo Fisher sets a new benchmark toestablish and apply novel diagnostic and prognostic strategies in healthcaremanagement," Christopher Pearce, CEO of Proteome Sciences, said in a pressrelease. "It has long been our goal to provide clinicians the tools they needto provide early diagnosis of disease and better match molecular targetingmedicines to the most likely responders. The output from this agreement shouldhave a profound positive impact on the lives of large numbers of patientssuffering from chronic diseases and, at the same time, provide considerableeconomic benefits to the health care system."
The three-stage MS Tandem Mass Tag mass spectrometrytechnique is a mass spectrometry-based workflow that enables mass spectrometersto simultaneously determine the relative quantitation of proteins in multiplesamples with improved accuracy. The workflow is applicable for drug discoveryas well as biomarker discovery, clinical analysis and early disease detection/prognosis.Proteome Sciences will makes use of its Tandem Mass Tags and Orbitraptechnology to develop a wider range of mass spectrometry assays, and throughits SysQuant workflows, will profile the low-level changes in activitydemonstrated by key cancer signaling pathways in order to help enable betterdrug selection for a range of solid tumors.
"Life sciences researchers today need to performhigh-quality relative quantitation of many samples quickly," said Ian Jardine,chief technology officer of Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry at ThermoFisher Scientific. "MS3 TMT technology greatly improves quantitative accuracyand throughput, while Orbitrap technology dramatically increases depth andquality of data. This agreement offers customers a new paradigm in proteomicsresearch."
"We are at a critical juncture toward the development ofpersonalized medicine which requires high-resolution maps of the proteinnetworks regulating disease," Dr. Ian Pike, chief operating officer at ProteomeSciences, commented in a statement. "The combination of the highest samplemultiplexing rates from TMT with the industry-leading Thermo ScientificOrbitrap mass spectrometer enables us to provide an unrivaled platform toinvestigate subtle but significant changes in the proteome."
SOURCE: Proteome Sciences press release
