NEW YORK, July 29-Amersham Biosciences said today that it is launching a two-year functional proteomics research collaboration with the Sloan-Kettering Institute.
The partners plan to develop a technology that can screen all expressed genes in a human genome in one day. The system will be designed to allow real-time protein screening to identify pathways and genes involved in disease states. Research will initially focus on cancer and the immune system.
Through the collaboration, Amersham plans to create new methods to discover and validate drug and diagnostic targets. Sloan-Kettering researchers hope to develop the understanding of biological pathways important to disease.
In the Functional Proteomics Project partnership, Amersham will supply its IN Cell Analyzer, a high-throughput screening system. Roughly 20 project researchers will work in Sloan-Kettering's labs, under the direction of James Rothman, head of the lab of Cellular Biochemistry & Biophysics, and Urs Rutishauser, who directs the Cellular and Developmental Neuroscience lab.
The effort will be jointly funded by both partners, who did not reveal further financial details of the arrangement.
The Sloan-Kettering Institute is the research wing of Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.