Advion Biosciences, an Ithaca, NY-based contract research organization, said this week it has signed an agreement to sell its Bioservices division to Quintiles for an undisclosed amount of cash.
The sale, which is expected to be completed in early November, will include Advion's SISCAPA assay services, Jay Johnson, Quintiles' senior director of corporate communication, told ProteoMonitor.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
SISCAPA, short for Stable Isotope Standards with Capture by Anti-Peptide Antibody, is an immuno-mass spec workflow for protein biomarker quantitation developed by Leigh Anderson, who in June launched a company – SISCAPA Assay Technologies – to commercialize the technique (PM 6/17/2011).
In July, Advion signed an agreement with Anderson's firm to offer SISCAPA assay services, making it the first contract research organization to offer the workflow (GWDN 7/27/2011).
The technology combines antibody-based peptide enrichment with mass spectrometry, increasing the sensitivity of mass spec instruments, which by themselves are often not sensitive enough to detect low-abundance proteins in complex samples.
Mass spec is an attractive alternative to ELISAs for protein biomarker detection because its multiplexing capabilities make it potentially less expensive. It also allows for the use of true internal standards like stable isotope labeled peptides, allowing, in principle, for more precise assays.