Partnership for high-throughput assay development and validation
Collaboration will initially focus on developing tests for diabetes and hemoglobin variants.
Bruker (MA, USA) has announced a partnership with the University of Victoria Genome British Columbia Proteomics Centre (UVic GBC Proteomics Centre [BC, Canada]) that will focus on the development and validation of high-throughput assays for determining hemoglobin variants and diabetes risk. The joint effort will utilize MALDI Biotyper platform of Bruker for clinical mass spectrometry, and will be based on intellectual property developed at the UVic GBC Proteomics Centre.
It is expected that the MALDI TOF-MS-based tests that are designed for use on the MALDI Biotyper platform will provide advantages (including specificity, accuracy, speed of analysis and the cost per analysis) in diagnosing and monitoring diabetes, as well as in measuring other hemoglobin variants, over the currently available methods available such as liquid chromatography, immunoassay and electrophoresis-based methods. These benefits are expected to lead to higher patient screening rates, which in the case of diabetes patients could be crucial, where earlier detection of at-risk subjects can prevent onset of disease.
The MALDI Biotyper platform is already in widespread clinical use and has various applications including microbial identification, environmental and pharmaceutical analysis, taxonomical research and quality control. Gary Kruppa, Vice President for Business Development at Bruker commented, “The MALDI Biotyper is a versatile, robust, benchtop system that is well suited for use in clinical laboratories as evidenced by its large installed base. We are very pleased to be working with the world-class team of researchers at the UVic GBC Proteomics Centre on the development and validation of high-throughput immunoMALDI tests to further broaden the clinical applications of the MALDI Biotyper platform.”
Christoph Borchers, Director of the Uvic GBC Proteomics Centre added, “The collaboration with Bruker is an excellent match. We believe that further development of our MALDI and immunoMALDI technology will lead to commercialization of MALDI-TOF-based tests for a number of important diseases. Developing and validating these tests in collaboration with Bruker gives us a partner ready to deploy such tests on the clinically accepted MALDI Biotyper platform, which will reduce our time to market.”
Source: Bruker and the University of Victoria announce collaboration on high throughput iMALDI assays.
