CPTC News
Stimulus Funding to Support Pilot Project to Make Human Proteome Clinically Accessible
Drs. Amanda Paulovich (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) and Steve Carr (The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard), members of the CPTAC Network, received a grant through the NIH Research and Research Infrastructure Grand Opportunities (GO), a program under the Recovery Act of 2009, in support of a pilot study entitled “Measurement of Cancer-Associated Biomarker Proteins in Complex Biological Samples.” The purpose of GO is to support high impact ideas that may lay the foundation for new fields of investigation.
The pilot study will assess the feasibility and scalability of a human proteome detection and quantitation (hPDQ) project. The goal of this project is to measure large collections of proteins in well-characterized breast cancer cell lines with absolute specificity, at throughput and cost levels that permit the study of meaningfully large biological populations. Although this pilot will focus on developing multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) assays against a subset of proteins, the ultimate goal of a larger hPDQ project is to generate monoclonal antibodies against the entire human proteome. If hPDQ is successful, the research community will have the means to assess all proteins across all disease states, profoundly impacting healthcare outcomes.
For more information, please visit: http://projectreporter.nih.gov/
New CPTAC Center Network Study Reveals Biomarker Method That Could Increase the Number of Diagnostic Tests for Cancer
June 28, 2009
A team of CPTAC researchers has demonstrated that a new method for detecting and quantifying protein biomarkers in body fluids may ultimately make it possible to screen multiple biomarkers in hundreds of patient samples, thus ensuring that only the strongest biomarker candidates will advance down the development pipeline. The goal of this research is to reduce the time and cost of developing cancer diagnostic tests, ultimately increasing the number of such tests in the clinic so cancer can be caught at its earliest stages.
“These findings are significant because they provide a potential solution for eliminating one of the major hurdles in validating protein biomarkers for clinical use. Thousands of cancer biomarkers are discovered every day, but only a handful ever makes it through clinical validation. This is a critical roadblock because biomarkers have the potential to allow doctors to detect cancer in the earliest stages, when treatment provides the greatest chances of survival,” said John E. Niederhuber, M.D., NCI director. “The critical limiting factor to date in validating biomarkers for clinical use has been the lack of standardized technologies and methodologies in the biomarker discovery and validation process, and this research may solve that dilemma.”
The study results were published in the online version of Nature Biotechnology on June 28, 2009. Click here to read the full press release.
