Agilent provides grant for university cancer study

Agilent Technologies has provided a grant of instruments and funding in support of prostate cancer research by the University of Michigan's Centre for Translational Pathology (MCTP).

The goal is to accelerate research to beat the disease using a multi-disciplinary systems-biology approach.

Gustavo Salem, Agilent's vice-president and general manager of the Biological Systems Division, said: 'This relationship will give us a better understanding of how to apply our technologies in a clinical research setting and will enable the University of Michigan to accelerate its scientific research.

Agilent is providing a 1200 Series liquid-chromatography (LC) system to be used to separate metabolites from human plasma and a 1200 Series Rapid Resolution LC coupled with a 6530 Accurate Mass quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer (Q-TOF MS) for the identification of those metabolites.

Dr Christopher Beecher, a professor of pathology at the university's medical school, said: 'We will focus our laboratory research on a systems-biological approach to try to understand the disease at the biochemical and genetic levels simultaneously.

'We expect to be able to make a number of discoveries in prostate cancer and to develop new techniques that will be useful universally,' he added.

The research team, led by Arul Chinnaiyan, the director of the MCTP, has already revealed metabolomic profiles of prostate cancer progression by looking at 1,126 metabolites across 262 samples of tissue, blood and urine.

The laboratory is currently trying to discover how prostate tumours gain the ability to spread.

The MCTP houses facilities for genomic, proteomic and metabolomic analyses - the three main disciplines used in systems biology.

The collaboration between MCTP and Agilent is a result of Agilent's University Relations Programme, which facilitates collaborations with universities around the world.

The programme sponsors research that advances the science of measurement and provides instructional materials to universities.

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