BG Medicine and Applied Biosystems collaborate on biomarker-guided drug discovery
technology into its systems biology platforms to enhance its
biomarker discovery and monitoring programs.
The collaboration will involve the two companies working together on biomarker discovery and development by integrating Applied Biosystems' life science technology into BG's proteomic and metabolic workflows. It will also involve the exploration of new applications for Applied Biosystems' genomics tools in several of BG's strategic initiatives over the next two years.
Biomarkers provide information about the presence of disease and disease progression and the studies will involve using a range of Applied Biosystems' technologies to study proteins, metabolites and gene expression to better understand the effects of diseases and the potential effectiveness of new drug therapies.
BG uses its biomarker discovery capabilities in its own internal molecular diagnostic discovery as well as to aid Big Pharma drug discovery processes.
Talking to DrugResearcher.com, Lisa Gordon, BG's vice president of corporate development and strategy said: "we're getting access to their latest instruments, the best technology out there, which will improve our ability to discover and develop biomarkers."
"With the rapid emergence of molecular medicine and biomarker-guided drug development initiatives, there is an explosive demand for biomarker discovery and validation research as well as the platforms that will deliver these biomarkers to the market," said Pieter Muntendam, BG CEO.
"This broad collaboration with Applied Biosystems should allow us to jointly make important contributions to this new medical and drug development research. "
Tony Hunt, senior director of pharma programs at Applied Biosystems, told DrugResearcher.com: "many researchers today look for biomarkers with small patient samples of between one and 10."
"BG has been able to take this to another level looking at 100 patient samples at a time; leading to higher statistical significance of the sample set and is at the forefront of the industrialisation of biomarker technology."
The deal will allow BG access to Applied Biosystems' next generation 4800 matrix assisted laser-desorption ionisation (MALDI) tandem time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometer, while allowing Applied Biosystems to evaluate the use of its instruments in these high throughput platforms.
"Biomarker discovery research has evolved with researchers wanting good quantitative biomarker identification which our instruments can deliver," continued Hunt.
"Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking at proteomics, metabolomics and genomics approaches and need to integrate the information from these workflows."
He added that: "BG is using workflows focussed on these areas to develop a systems biology approach that gives a lot more insight into what happens in people with disease."
