15 Research Studies to be Presented at ASMS
FREMONT, Calif., June 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc., (Nasdaq:CIPH - News) announced today that leading researchers will present more than a dozen studies involving its SELDI ProteinChip® technology at the 50th American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Conference in Orlando, Florida, June 2-6, 2002. As the growing number of Ciphergen citations implies, "The ProteinChip Company" is enabling clinical and basic researchers to use the power of its proprietary SELDI technology to advance proteomics research, including the discovery of multiple protein biomarkers and biomarker patterns associated with the early detection of cancer.
For example, scientists from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine profiled blood plasma samples from colon cancer patients versus controls by SELDI Expression Difference Mapping(TM). The results of this study, to be presented at ASMS, revealed novel biomarker candidates and showed the potential of differential pattern analysis for rapid discovery. While the study uncovered a number of differentially expressed proteins throughout the mass ranges monitored, the most pronounced differences observed were at 8.9 kDa and 9.3 kDa, a molecular weight range difficult for 2-D gel technology.
In another noteworthy ASMS poster, an international team of researchers will describe how they used a protein biomarker pattern to classify serum from nasopharyngeal carcinoma versus healthy patients. The group utilized Ciphergen's Biomarker Patterns(TM) Software to develop a classification scheme for a 30 x 11 (cancer relapse versus complete remission) test study. The model yielded 91% sensitivity and 90% specificity in nasopharyngeal carcinoma relapse; nasopharyngeal is a cancer that has a high incidence in East Asian countries. Further, the classification tree-based model revealed several interesting protein peaks that the study participants went on to isolate and identify. Ciphergen's SELDI-assisted purification strategy and peptide mapping approach yielded two high-confidence matches in the NCBI protein database within three days. Finally, the research team from Ciphergen and the Queen Elizabeth and Baptist Hospitals in Hong Kong went on to perform 'on-chip' SELDI-Tandem MS sequence analysis to confirm the preliminary identification results.
Other ASMS presenters throughout the conference will discuss how Ciphergen's ProteinChip technology significantly increased the predictive value of their results. As Ciphergen's SELDI technology becomes mainstream, Ciphergen expects that more researchers will move beyond focusing on single biomarkers to performing multiple biomarker pattern recognition and analysis.
"Following on the heels of the NCI/FDA ovarian cancer study published last February in The Lancet, Ciphergen clients continue to demonstrate the utility of our platform for protein biomarker pattern-based classification of many cancers as well as other diseases," stated Richard Rubin, Ciphergen's Director of Marketing. "The complete ProteinChip Biomarker System package -officially launched at last year's ASMS Meeting -- is leading to many exciting predictive diagnostic discoveries, several of which are being advanced into larger validation studies," Rubin added.
William E. Rich, Ciphergen's CEO added, "Ciphergen is effectively using our Biomarker Center(TM) strategy to speed the validation of the ProteinChip platform in predictive medicine as well as to offer our expertise to drug companies on a collaborative services basis. A number of Biomarker Center studies with academic collaborators are nearing completion and we expect to add to the growing list of SELDI derived, predictive diagnostic publications in the near future."... |
