This story originally ran on April 22.
Gentel Biosciences and Protein Biotechnologies have forged a collaboration to market and sell reagents and reverse-phase protein arrays.
The deal, reached last week, covers Protein Biotechnologies' SomaPlex arrays and Gentel's APiX View Detection Kits, which were launched this week, a company official told ProteoMonitor.
The kits allow for the "ultra-sensitive" chromogenic detection of protein microarrays, Gentel said in a statement.
According to Bryce Nelson, vice president of technology and business development at Gentel, many of the company's customers are interested in technology such as SomaPlex.
"We've been hearing a lot about these types of arrays in the marketplace," he said. "They'll say they want a bigger collection of [tissues or they want a specific type of disease ... or even new types of lysates."
The SomaPlex protein microarrays are based on tissue lysates and include arrays for breast cancer tumors, liver tumors, colon tumors, and other tissues.
Earlier this month, Protein Biotechnologies and BioServe launched a serum-based reverse-phase protein microarray for breast cancer (PM 04/09/10).
Nelson said that Protein Biotechnologies benefits from the collaboration with Gentel because it exposes the company to a bigger customer base. At the same time, the deal adds more applications to Gentel's Proteomics Multi-System launched in February.
The partnership with Protein Biotechnologies will allow mass spec-based researchers doing biomarker research who are interested in testing their markers "to look at a … large number of patient samples without having to go through the hassle of doing an" institutional review board, Nelson said.
He declined to disclose the terms of the multi-year deal.
For now the collaboration is limited to the APiX kit and the SomaPlex product lines, but could be expanded to cover other product lines and the development of other technologies.
"Right now, we're basically going to integrate the systems and …see what the customer is looking for in the future," Nelson said.
Gentel said the APiX technology allows for the detection of any biotinylated molecule, "generating light grey-to-black spots that are visible to the naked eye and can be scanned with the Gentel Proteomics Multi-System."
"This launch expands the applications of APiX technology to include not only antibody and protein arrays on clear glass slides, but also tumor lysate arrays on porous nitrocellulose surfaces," Alex Vodenlich, president and CEO of Gentel, said. "Now virtually any commercial protein microarray can take advantage of Gentel's chromogenic detection."
APiX is also compatible with secondary antibodies such as anti-mouse and anti-rabbit. APiX uses a proprietary gold-catalyzed silver deposition and improves sensitivity over fluorescence detection, the company said.