NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Upstream Biosciences has hired Genpathway to use its chromatin immunoprecipitation assays in its cancer biomarker-validation studies, Upstream Bio said today.
Genpathway will use its assays to “help elucidate critical parameters involving specific gene transcription factors and pathways” and provide “critical information for the next phase of Upstream's program to validate its first two cancer biomarkers and drug response assay,” according to Upstream.
Upstream said the regulatory regions involve gene switches that control conditions related to gene activation, the number of copies of the gene produced, and variations in these regions that have been linked to cancer.
The company said it has five provisional patent filings for these variations as cancer biomarkers that may help to help early cancer detection.
Upstream CEO Joel Bellenson said the agreement “builds on the important analytic work we already have underway with NimbleGen and may allow us to acquire in-depth information that is not available with other analytic methods."
Financial terms of the agreement were not released.