CPTAC

This story originally ran on Oct. 6

By Adam Bonislawski
Theranostics Health has licensed a new fixative developed by researchers at George Mason University that could significantly improve the quality of tissue samples available to proteomic researchers.

This story originally ran on Aug. 22 and has been updated to include comments from a participant.
By Adam Bonislawski

BGI, which, according to an official, generated roughly $6.2 million in proteomics revenue last year, plans to buy around 15 new high-resolution machines and 30 to 40 triple quadrupoles as part of its efforts to expand into the clinical proteomics and pharma markets.

The company, called SISCAPA Assay Technologies, will offer assay development to pharmas and CROs and has tapped antibody firm Epitomics to produce reagents for the system and sell SISCAPA kits. So far, the company has licensed the technology to Pfizer for internal use.

The CPTC initiative aims to offer one award for a base period of one year plus four one-year options to develop and maintain a data center in support of the second phase of the project, in which six to eight teams will molecularly characterize four to six tumor types.

The call for targets, from which CPTC expects to select 40 to 50 proteins for antibody development, is part of a pilot effort exploring the organization's ability to receive and process such requests from the extramural research community.

The work will focus on developing antibodies to tryptic peptides derived from protein biomarkers in human plasma for mass spec workflows like SISCAPA and immuno-MALDI.

With most presentations avoiding promises of immediate clinical utility, post-translational modifications emerged as a primary area of consideration at the initiative's annual meeting, held this week in Bethesda, Md.