NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) ¨C Thermo Fisher Scientific will collaborate with Expression Pathology in applying their respective proteomic and microdissection technologies to measure cancer-related proteins in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue.
The collaboration will involve using Thermo Fisher's mass spectrometry technologies with Expression Pathology's laser microdissection and Liquid Tissue sample processing tools to study these proteins using an alternative to immunohistochemistry (IHC) and tissue morphology techniques.
IHC and morphology have been used traditionally to assess FFPE tissue samples for clinical research, Thermo Fisher said, but the firm added that those methods have limitations in sensitivity and throughput.
Under this effort, Thermo Fisher's Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry (BRIMS) Center will work with Expression Pathology to develop an alternative method that is not dependent on specific antibodies, and which is more sensitive and useful for a wider range of proteins.
The collaboration will combine three technologies for the first time. Expression Pathology's microdissection technology will be used to collect specific cell types from FFPE and its Liquid Tissue will be used to make the samples soluble, while Thermo Fisher's mass spectrometers will be used to measure protein targets, and the BRIMS Center's PinPoint software will link the tissue images with quantitative data.
Expression Pathology CEO Casey Eitner said in a statement that using the three technologies together "presents opportunities in personalized medicine to relate those [target protein] measurements to patients and better inform drug treatment decisions."
"This collaboration extends our quantitative proteomics workflows into novel areas and complements our current focus on biomarker discovery and its translation into the clinical research environment," Mary Lopez, director of the BRIMS Center, said in a statement.
