Partnership to Develop Biomarker Discovery Centre and Multi-Omics Centre for Precision Medicine Announced

Sciex has announced that The University of Manchester, UK, has invested in a large suite of high-end Sciex mass spectrometers for targeted and next-generation proteomics for its new Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre. With Sciex’s SWATH® Acquisition technologies, the Centre will be one of the biggest clinical proteomics facilities in the world. It will focus on industrialising proteomics research, and spearhead a series of biomarker development projects and international collaborations.

The Centre, which is supported initially by £18 million in funding, will also provide valuable research and analytical resources for the new Sciex Multi-omics Centre for Precision Medicine, a partnership between Sciex and the Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre at The University of Manchester. The new centre, expected to open in mid-2016, will include Sciex scientists working in partnership with University researchers to develop and trial new omics workflows in a real-world setting.

The University of Manchester’s new research centre will rely on Sciex’s TripleTOF® 6600 Systems with SWATH Acquisition for highly reproducible and large-scale biomarker discovery and validation.  The University of Manchester has also invested in a number of Sciex QTRAP® 6500 Systems that will allow its researchers to quickly convert the novel biomarker discoveries into routine MRM-based targeted proteomics assays, rather than spending many months generating antibody-based immunoassays, which have recently been linked in the media to the reproducibility crisis in scientific research.

“The Sciex TripleTOF instruments are the best suited systems for SWATH Acquisition,” explained Professor Whetton. “We also chose the Sciex QTRAP instruments for targeted protein quantification, which will allow highly powerful verification and validation of the biomarkers that we will discover through our SWATH next-gen proteomics pipeline.”

“We aim to become the leading city for precision medicine. This partnership with Sciex will enable us to be at the cutting edge of both mass spectrometry and biomarker discovery, and help us to take forward our complete precision medicine portfolio,” he added.