NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Norwegian biotech firm Hunt Biosciences and Boulder, Col.-based SomaLogic today announced a collaboration to validate protein biomarkers with an initial focus on the prediction of cardiovascular events.
Under the deal, biological samples and clinical data from Hunt will be analyzed with SomaLogic's proteomic technology called Somascan. The technology uses SomaLogic's nucleic acid-based protein binding reagents called Slow Off-rate Modified Aptamers, or Somamers, to screen patient samples in order to quantify specific proteins.
Hunt is supplying samples and accompanying clinical data and selected phenotypic information from up to 2,000 of the more than 100,000 participants in the Hunt study, a longitudinal population health study being conducted in Norway.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The collaboration will first focus on cardiovascular events such as strokes, heart attacks, and heart failure. In a statement, Hunt CEO Per Foss said, "We believe this collaboration has a significant potential and could be extended to include other medical conditions that will benefit from the discovery and use of well-documented biomarkers."
Hunt was founded in 2007 as the commercial arm of Hunt Research Centre and is owned by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Central Norway Regional Health Authority, and the North Trøndelag County.
"The clinical sample cohort available through the Hunt health study is among the broadest in the world, and we believe that our technology is uniquely capable of deriving new clinical insights from those samples that can lead to new diagnostics and acceleration of drug discovery and development efforts to the benefit of patients everywhere," Stephen Williams, chief medical officer of SomaLogic, said.