NEW YORK – Pressure Biosciences (PBI) said Tuesday that it has entered into a global comarketing agreement with Danaher company Leica Microsystems for a mass spectrometry sample preparation platform.
The platform combines Leica's laser microdissection (LMD) technology, which allows for precise cutting of small biopsy samples, and South Easton, Massachusetts-based PBI's pressure cycling technology (PCT), which aids extraction and digestion of proteins from samples prior to mass spec analysis.
The workflow was developed by Thomas Conrads, senior director of women's health research at Inova Health System, a Northern Virginia healthcare provider.
"We believe that integrating LMD, PCT, and MS will improve our understanding of the complex tissue microenvironment and better enable identification of new biomarkers," Conrads said in a statement. "We believe that the insights gained from applying this novel workflow will result in significant improvements in the clinical management of gynecologic and other cancers."
"The generation of reliable and reproducible data from biopsy samples is difficult, as it requires the integration of multiple and varied laboratory processes, particularly tissue extraction, sample preparation, and analysis," said Roxana McCloskey, PBI's directors of sales and marketing. "The innovative LMD-PCT workflow enables the reproducible and rapid extraction of proteins from precious clinical samples by combining the precision of the Leica LMD system with PBI's versatile PCT sample preparation platform."
"Biomarkers can be used as indicators of certain diseases, such as cancer. They also improve our understanding of the complex tumor microenvironment," said Falk Schlaudraff, head of applications management at Leica. "There are distinct molecular differences between tumor and non-tumor regions, as well as in the tumor itself. These critical differences can only be deciphered by isolating specific, minute sections of these regions. The combined LMD and PCT systems allow for this separation with high accuracy and speed."