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Precision—not personalized—medicine
March 2011
EDIT CONNECT
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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—
Personalized medicine—or what TD2
president Dr. Stephen Gately calls
"precision medicine"—is progressing toward
the clinic in research done here by TD2's parent TGen. In recognition of their
work, TGen and TD2, its wholly owned subsidiary, have been selected by Avantra
Biosciences as a key test site for Avantra's new
biomarker quantitation
platform, an automated multiplex immunoassay system to evaluate the associations
between elevated protein levels, unique patient
characteristics and drug
responses. The new Q400 Biomarker Workstation and Angio Qx BioChip Immunoassay
will enable the rapid measurement of biomarkers
that can predict how cancer
patients will respond to new drug therapies.
"Avantra's management team
has always had a tremendous
respect for the business and scientific professionals at TGen," says CEO Brian
McKernan. "Through our discussions and
strategic brainstorming sessions with
Dr. Jeff Trent and Dr. Spyro Mousses at TGen, we were introduced to Dr. Steve
Gately, the president of TD2. TGen,
TD2 and Avantra Biosciences began
discussing several concepts to bring together various genomic and proteomic
technologies that would provide
researchers, clinicians and pharmaceutical
companies with a novel, high-utility offering for the
purposes of disease management, drug profiling and
patient stratification."
TD2 (which is short for TGen Drug Development) was
particularly
attracted to the Avantra system because it can simultaneously
measure 10 proteins associated with angiogenesis.
"Avantra's advanced testing technologies will help
scientists speed development of their laboratory discoveries into new
therapeutics in a safe and cost-effective manner," Gately says. "Early
identification of biomarkers that are associated with drug activity will
facilitate a more seamless translation to measure the most appropriate markers
for the same drug in the clinic."
TD2 provides drug development firms with expertise in moving
promising laboratory discoveries through the preclinical, clinical and
regulatory approval steps of getting new drugs to patients as quickly and
safely as possible. Avantra will assist in this process with the
commercialization of the new Q400 BioMarker Workstation and the Angio Qx
BioChip Immunoassay, which are currently in the alpha, quality-assurance
testing phase.
According to Avantra, the platform offers researchers
easy-to-use benchtop
multiplex protein tests that deliver rapid quantitative
results with very little setup time. The completely self-contained Q400/Angio
Qx combination is
said to provide quantitative protein biomarker results for 10
analytes in less than an hour, with less than five minutes of sample
preparation. Avantra
is currently developing additional assays for its QDPx product
line that will target specific areas in cancer medicine.
"TD2 is a leader and change agent in the scientific
community's effort to apply innovative molecular analysis technologies
to solve
challenges in the drug development and oncology fields," says McKernan. "Our
collaboration with their outstanding team of professionals is a
critical
component to Avantra's goal of integrating our QPDx proteomic solutions with
novel and cutting-edge molecular profiling technologies."
Avantra and TD2
are just starting a new project with a large pharmaceutical company to utilize
their respective technologies for drug profiling and patient stratification
purposes. Gately notes that TD2 is already quietly celebrating precision
medicine
successes by hoisting "We did it" banners in its headquarters on the Mayo
Clinic campus in Arizona.
The nonprofit TGen
subsidiary has 20 clients that have progressed from early discovery to Phase I
testing in humans, and in partnership with Life Technologies, has studied
the
whole genome of 13 of 15 patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
Triple-negative breast cancer
refers to any breast cancer that does not
express the genes for estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) or
Her2/neu. This subtype of breast
cancer is clinically characterized as more
aggressive and less responsive to standard treatment and is associated with
poorer overall prognosis. TD2
and Life Technologies are using NGS and
bioinformatic analysis to develop personalized drug treatments for the fifteen.
In another example of precision
medicine, TD2 has identified a biomarker for
pancreatic cancer and developed an experimental therapy that has shown benefit
in the single patient thus
far treated.
8 steps, 10 analytes, 6 replicants
The process of using Avantra's Q400 Biomarker Workstation and the Angio Qx BioChip Immunoassay in tandem: 1. Bring
the BioChip, sample diluent and sample to be tested to room temperature.
2. Turn
on the Q400 and insert the BioChip.
3. Input
sample and
study information into the Q400 user interface.
4. Mix
110 µL of sample with 110 µL of sample diluent.
5. Inject
200 µL of the sample/diluent mixture into the BioChip sample input
port.
6. Press
the start button.
7. The
assay proceeds without further user intervention; results are ready in approximately
50 minutes.
8. The
Q400 uses stored standards curves to automatically calculate the concentration
of each of the 10
analytes measured by the AngioGenQ Biochip.
Code: E031113 Back |
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