The first user meeting on protein arrays in clinical applications was organised by Protagen and focused on the increasing relevance of new markers and marker panels for drug development and therapy.
The potential of Protagen's Uniarray platform technology for identification and validation of reliable biomarkers for indications such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, heart failure, and prostate cancer, as well as the technological and biostatistical challenges in production and read-out of protein-array-based multiplex diagnostics were discussed.
Initiated by the DGKL 1 Working Group Clinical Proteomics and the MPC2, the first user meeting on protein arrays for clinical applications took place in the Biomedizinzentrum Dortmund on 6 November 2009.
The current unmet diagnostic need and the relevance of auto-antibody signatures for advanced diagnostics and therapies in the indications mentioned above were covered by the speakers' presentations.
Prof Matthias Schneider, head of the rheumatology department at the University Clinic Dusseldorf, said that 'despite the fact that these novel auto-antibody-based serum diagnostics have not yet proven their robustness in routine applications, the results elaborated together with Protagen are already impressive and promising'.
Dr Stefan Mullner, chief executive officer at Protagen, added: 'In the last years we were able to establish a distinguished international network of clinical co-operation partners interested in our platform technology, and therefore are well equipped for the multi-centre clinical validation of indication specific marker panels.'
Dr Jean-Marc Schlaeppi at Novartis Pharma employs Protagen's Unichip-Technology in preclinical development projects of therapeutic antibodies.
He said: 'We are using these chips for quantitative ranking of antibody development candidates based on the number of off-target-binding events.'
In summary, an interdisciplinary discussion was started to match the current status in protein array technologies and clinical requirements.
A follow-up meeting is planned for 2010.
