Gentel® Biosciences, a protein microarray life sciences company, announces a technology partnership with Eprogen® to create products for the discovery of new autoantibody biomarkers using whole proteome microarrays.

Whole proteome microarrays are fabricated from individual cell lines or tissue samples such as tumor biopsies using ProteoSep®, a proprietary protein fractionation technique co-developed by Eprogen and the University of Michigan. Tim Barder, President of Eprogen described the technique, “Simply stated, we take well established cell lines or tissue samples for a particular cancer (disease) of interest, lyse them and, after a 2D liquid phase separation using ProteoSep, we print microarrays on Gentel slides of the ~1000 discrete fractions containing subsets of the ‘intact’ proteins fractionated from the lysate. The slides are then probed with sera or known antibodies for intact proteins (spots) of interest. This ‘Bedside-to-Bench’ methodology is a novel approach to combine analytical proteomics techniques with antibody detection techniques to mine for new clinically relevant biomarkers at the patient level.”

According to Gentel’s President and CEO, Alex Vodenlich, “The whole proteome array approach enables true biomarker discovery using a protein array. Serum antibodies are attractive biomarker candidates because they are relatively stable, are present in abundance, and are easily accessible. This powerful approach has utility for biomarker discovery in disease segments as diverse as cancer, infectious disease, allergy and autoimmune disease.”

“The availability of antibodies and recombinant proteins has historically been a bottleneck in the production of protein arrays. Eprogen’s proteome partitioning technology overcomes this bottleneck in a very unique way, and enables fabrication of whole proteome arrays customized for any researcher,” continued Vodenlich.

The agreement couples technology from Eprogen with Gentel’s portfolio of nitrocellulose-based protein microarray surface chemistries. As part of the agreement, partitioned whole proteome arrays will be offered for fluorescence detection on PATH® protein microarray slides and chromogenic detection on Gentel’s APiX Array™ System. Additionally, Gentel will process samples on whole proteome arrays for customers through its Symphony Array™ Services group.

“This microarray platform makes discovery and prioritization of new candidate biomarkers for further analysis and characterization by MS or Western Blots significantly easier. By using Gentel’s nitrocellulose-based surface chemistry, we have been able to achieve a significant improvement in signal-to-noise in our whole proteome arrays. The combination of protein partitioning using Eprogen’s ProteoSep technology coupled with Gentel’s technology is powerful. It should have a significant impact on clinically relevant biomarker discovery,” says Tim Barder, Eprogen’s President.

ProteoSep, PATH, APiX and whole proteome partitioning technology are covered by a suite of issued and pending US and international patents.

Gentel Biosciences provides products and services that enable novel approaches to high throughput Biomarker discovery and screening. Gentel’s mission is to work closely with their customers to provide the best solution to their quantitative or qualitative multiplex assay needs. These solutions leverage Gentel’s expertise including a proprietary array platform, custom protein arrays, assay development services, sample processing services and chromogenic or fluorescent detection. Visit www.gentelbio.com for more information.