NEW YORK, Jan. 17 - Aclara BioSciences and researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine are pairing up to study the proteomics of autoimmune disorders, the company said on Thursday.
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Under the collaboration, the researchers will use Aclara's eTag assay technology to characterize autoantibodies in human serum and create "immunology proteome" panels that can be used in clinical and investigative work.
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The Stanford researchers involved in this partnership, PJ Utz and William Robinson, are also participants in a project to characterize unique autoantibody responses during autoimmune diseases and identify the patterns of antigens that these autoantibodies recognize.
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The team has been using their own protein microarray technology to screen patient sera samples for the ability to recognize immobilized antigens, including synthetic peptides, purified proteins, and recombinant proteins.
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Aclara's system, by contrast, allows assays to be performed in solution, thus expanding the variety of antigens that researchers can use and allowing for many reactions to be measured simultaneously. The group plans to create a panel of antigens that can probe for and quantify a range of autoantibodies in samples from cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid and serum.
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Aclara is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.