NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – MolecularMD today said that it has partnered with Ventana Medical Systems to study and compare methods of PTEN detection and expression.
PTEN is a tumor suppressor gene that is mutated in many cancers and is a regulator of the PI3-kinase pathway.
The objective of the study is to determine the correlation between methods for detecting PTEN gene copy number and protein biomarker expression using in-situ hybridization (ISH) methods for gene detection, PTEN Sanger sequencing for mutational analysis, and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods for protein staining, said MolecularMD.
Brightfield ISH and Sanger sequencing methods will be compared for detecting gene copy number, and the ISH results will be compared to the levels of expression of the PTEN protein detected by immunohistochemistry. The firms hope that the comparison will provide an understanding of the analytical validity of Brightfield ISH methods compared to Sanger sequencing and IHC methods for determination of PTEN status.
Further details of the alliance were not disclosed.
Portland, Ore.-based Molecular MD is privately held and is developing companion diagnostic tests for cancer therapeutics. Ventana is part of the Roche Group.