NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Applied Proteogenomics Organizational Learning and Outcomes (APOLLO) network has selected Amanda Paulovich's laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to create panels of protein biomarkers for cancer research.
Paulovich and her team will develop multiple-reaction monitoring mass spectrometry (MRM-MS) assays for these protein markers and apply them to samples from cancer patients participating in the APOLLO initiative.
Data from these and other assays will then be analyzed to determine if the patients' treatments are working and to identify other therapies that might prove effective.
Paulovich is an expert in MRM-MS and has led efforts within the NCI's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium to develop large MRM-MS panels for cancer markers.
"We're excited to take this technology that we've extensively vetted in preclinical experiments and now begin to implement it in clinical trials," she said in a statement.
A partnership between the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the APOLLO effort is part of the Cancer Moonshot project launched last year by former Vice President Joseph Biden. It aims to combine genomic and proteomic data to assess and guide therapy in cancer patients, focusing initially on a cohort of 8,000 lung cancer patients drawn from the VA and DoD systems and then moving on to investigate a variety of cancers.