Collaborations

The CPTC is designed to enable infrastructure development to support clinical proteomics experiments. As such, the goals of the Initiative seek to provide a broadly applicable set of tools amenable to wide use by the research community. To facilitate this mission, the NCI has formed several strategic collaborations with Federal and international agencies, including:

Argonne National Laboratories (ANL)

NCI has formed an Interagency Agreement with ANL to produce ~100 well-characterized cancer-related proteins for use in antibody production, affinity capture technology development, and creation of reagent protein standards. In addition, a "Protein ID-to-Antibody Production" Workflow is being explored that begins with protein target acquisition and uses publicly available clones/expression vectors to produce proteins, which can then be characterized and their data submitted to a public database. Such a strategy will establish a new quality assessment/quality control (QA/QC) standard for protein/antibody development for the clinical proteomics community. These proteins will be used for a variety of purposes, including antigen development, proteomics platform assessment, and standards development.

To learn more about ANL visit http://www.anl.gov.

Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB) at the
University of Iowa

The University of Iowa’s Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB) collects, stores, grows, and distributes all hybridomas and monoclonal antibodies from the Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer programs. The DSHB was established to supply investigators with monoclonal antibodies useful for studies in developmental and cell biology, which may be ordered as tissue culture supernatants, ascites, or concentrate; selected hybridomas are also available as frozen or growing cells.

To learn more about the University of Iowa Hybridoma Bank, visit: http://dshb.biology.uiowa.edu.

European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)

The Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer is also working closely with the EBI to coordinate bioinformatics standards development for clinical proteomics. The EBI is a non-profit academic organization associated with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory that manages databases of biological data, including nucleic acids, protein sequences, and macromolecular structures. It is the premier center for research and services in bioinformatics in the European Union (EU). Recently, the EBI invited the Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative to serve as an Associate Partner to Proteomics Data Collection (ProDaC), a recently awarded grant from the EU to the EBI. The ProDaC program will develop international data standards with recommendations from the HUPO-PSI. The NCI is the only Federal research agency invited to participate in this program as an associate partner.

To learn more about EBI visit http://www.ebi.ac.uk.

Harvard Institute of Proteomics (HIP)

The Harvard Institute of Proteomics (HIP) applies Nucleic Acid Programmable Protein Arrays (NAPPA) technology to hydriomas and monoclonal antibodies from the Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer programs. HIP has taken the next step after the Human Genome Project by cloning all available human genes in a standard form that enables full-length, high throughput protein expression. By developing and applying new resources and technologies, HIP enables the study of proteins on a genome-wide scale using informatics and automation. The Institute has produced over fifteen thousand clones to date.

To learn more about the Harvard Institute of Proteomics, visit: http://www.hip.harvard.edu.

Human Protein Atlas (HPA)

After hybridomas and monoclonal antibodies produced from the Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer programs are first characterized by the antibody characterization center at NCI-Frederick, they are further characterized using tissue microarrays at the Human Protein Atlas (HPA). The HPA is a well-recognized, mature resource for tissue microarray analysis expression data for thousands of antibodies across hundreds of normal human tissues and cancer cells. The data is publicly available and presented as high resolution images of immunohistochemically stained tissues and cell lines annotated with links to proteins for specific genes or by browsing individual chromosomes.

To learn more about the Human Protein Atlas, visit: http://www.proteinatlas.org.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

NCI has entered into an Interagency Agreement with NIST to develop MS assessment materials to be used by the CPTAC teams. These materials, designed to assess the performance metrics of various instruments, will be the first of their kind developed by the NCI and will help to evaluate and compare existing proteomic technologies and compare these with emerging proteomic technologies of interest to the clinical cancer community.

To learn more about NIST visit http://www.NIST.gov.