NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agilent Technologies said today that it has granted instruments and given funding to the University of Michigan for its prostate cancer research programs.
Under the grant, Agilent is contributing a 1200 Series liquid chromatography system, and a 1200 Series Rapid Resolution LC system coupled to a 6530 Accurate Mass quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer to the school's Center for Translational Pathology. The company did not disclose how much funding it granted to the school under the agreement.
The researchers will use the LC system to separate metabolites from human plasma and the Q-TOF for identifying those metabolites.
"We will focus our laboratory research on a systems-biology approach to try to understand the disease at the biochemical and genetic levels simultaneously," said Christopher Beecher, who is professor of pathology at the U-M Medical School. "We expect to be able to make a number of discoveries in prostate cancer and to develop new techniques that will be useful universally."
The collaboration was developed through Agilent's University Relations Program.
The researchers have "already revealed metabolomic profiles of prostate cancer progression by looking at 1,126 metabolites across 262 samples of tissue, blood, or urine," and the lab currently is studying how prostate tumors spread, said Agilent.