Ciphergen Partnering With the EU Funded ADDNET Consortium to Discover and Develop Diagnostics of Renal Disease
Wednesday December 15, 9:01 am ET
ProteinChip(R) Technology to Provide Biomarker Discovery and Assays
FREMONT, Calif., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ciphergen Diagnostics, a division of Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CIPH - News), announced today that it is collaborating with the ADDNET consortium which is focused on creating a paradigm shift from biopsies for the diagnosis of kidney disease to advanced molecular diagnostics from patient urine. The ADDNET consortium, funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union, consists of 6 participants from four countries and is led by Prof. Harry Holthofer at the University of Helsinki.
"We are extremely pleased to have been selected to participate in this consortium consisting of leading universities in Europe," stated William E. Rich, President and CEO of Ciphergen. "Existing diagnostics are limited in their ability to provide predictive information, particularly given the growth of kidney disease worldwide."
In 1999, there were approximately 424,000 patients suffering from end stage renal disease (ESRD) in the United States alone, with approximately 89,000 new cases reported that year. Existing therapies (dialysis and transplantation) are extremely expensive, not curative and cause considerable human suffering. Diabetes is the major single cause for ESRD with up to 40% of all dialysis and transplantation patients due to diabetic nephropathy. The incidence of diabetes and its renal complications are continually rising; the World Health Organization has estimated that the number of patients with diabetes will double to 300 million by 2025. Earlier diagnosis of subclinical renal disease would permit targeted intensive treatment, possibly slowing the progression of renal disease in patients. Current blood and urine tests cannot detect subclinical renal disease, and, although kidney biopsies are accurate, they are invasive and therefore cannot be a routine clinical test. Hence, the Sixth Framework Programme has funded this multi-year, multiinstitution project to employ genomic, proteomic and bioinformatics tools to identify and validate a set of key molecular markers directly from patient urine that may yield novel diagnostic markers for the early and accurate non-invasive diagnosis of renal disease.
Prof. Harry Holthofer, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Technomedium at the University of Helsinki and leader of the ADDNET consortium, said: "Ciphergen's ProteinChip technology and Pattern Track(TM) process was chosen to provide the biomarker discovery and assay capability for this important project due to its suitability for protein expression profiling and ability to work synergistically with the other approaches that will be included, such as gene expression profiling. In addition, their promising approach on translating research into clinical diagnostics was an important consideration."... |
