NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Cancer Institute said today that it has struck two new partnerships, one with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and another with the Food and Drug Administration, to develop and support new proteomics research projects through its Office of Cancer Clinical Proteomics Research, or OCCPR.
Under one memorandum of understanding, OCCPR and NHLBI's Proteomics Center Program agreed to extend a collaboration under which the partners will share reagents and protocols and develop bioinformatics standards for studies that use proteomics tools to understand cancer and cardiovascular and lung diseases.
The NCI proteomics office also signed an MOU with the FDA to formally extend a collaboration with FDA's Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation and Safety.
Under this agreement, the partners will work on statistical experimental design, analytical validation of instruments, informatics, and biospecimen sample preparations, as they are related to clinical cancer diagnostics and cancer therapeutics.
OCCPR's core efforts include integrating proteomics technologies with publicly accessible data, reagents, reference materials, and analysis systems, with the larger aim of supporting cancer research. The office also manages the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium and represents a network of Protein Characterization Centers that coordinate proteomics studies of genomically characterized cancer specimens.