Applying quantitative proteomics to tumor marker discovery
With tumor therapy becoming increasingly a focus of researchers and investors alike, the demand for effective tumor markers grows strongly. Entelechon has started an initiative for the development of tumor marker discovery kits. The project is funded by the German BMBF (Ministry of Education and Research) and aims at the design of a combined depletion and enrichment kit specific to a panel of potential tumor markers.
Tumor diagnostics is hampered by the extremely low abundance of tumor markers in blood serum. Techniques for detecting such markers must therefore be fine-tuned to reach a very high level of sensitivity. In the project, Entelechon will develop a kit which allows to deplete abundant proteins, such as immunoglobulines or albumin, in a serum sample, and to specifically enrich target marker proteins.
A consortium of four partners: The Institute for Pathology and the Surgical Clinic of the University Medical Center Erlangen, the Biobank of the University Cancer Center Erlangen, the Institute for Biochemistry of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Entelechon. The Institute for Biochemistry will contribute mass spectrometry expertise and the development of analytical protocols, while the clinical partners will contribute expertise on tumor markers, as well as serum samples of healthy subjects and patients.
With this project, Entelechon continues its successful activities in the field of tumor diagnostics, which had started with the participation in the DECanBio consortium. DECanBio aims at identifying biomarkers for bladder cancer in urine.
The project will provide new approaches and answers for R&D laboratories and pharma companies working on the validation of biomarkers for drug development. The kit will also be a foundation for other products for the parallel detection of multiple biomarkers in cancer and other diseases.
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