NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Massachusetts-based Ymir Genomics today announced a strategic collaboration with the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) to develop urinary biomarkers that will help detect hepatocellular carcinoma in at-risk patient populations.
As part of the collaboration, Ymir will isolate extracellular vesicles and examine the miRNA profiles of urine samples from liver cancer patients and high-risk cirrhotic patient controls. OHSU will then take the vesicle preps and determine specific protein profiles.
The collaboration will use Ymir's urinary extracellular vesicle technology and the Knight Cancer Institute OHSU Proteomics Shared Resource, which was built to make spectrometry-based protein analysis capabilities available to the OHSU biomedical research community.
"With our technology and OHSU's considerable expertise, I am confident that we can find these much-needed biomarkers," Ymir Genomics CSO Shannon Pendergrast said in a statement. "Imagine at-risk patients monitoring their liver health by simply dropping a urine sample into the mail. The stability of exosomes in urine makes this possible."