NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Ezose Sciences and Hirosaki University in Japan today announced a glycomics research collaboration to identify new biomarkers for the prediction and monitoring of progress of prostate cancer and other urological cancers.
Under the terms of the deal, Hirosaki researchers will collect urine samples from well-characterized patients and control populations in Japan, and Ezose will analyze the samples using its GlycanMap platform.
Hirosaki University is granting Pine Brook, NJ-based Ezose the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize new biomarkers resulting from the deal. Other terms were not disclosed.
"Given the already established clinical utility of glycan-based biomarkers in certain cancers, we believe that further studies in oncology hold promise for identifying other novel biomarkers that could help guide clinical practice," Hidehisa Asada, vice president of R&D at Ezose, said in a statement.
Ezose's GlycanMap uses an automated 96-well, bead-based glycan enrichment platform linked to MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to identify and quantify glycans in biological samples like blood and tissue.