Hunter research labs team with Amersham in new project

The University of Newcastle and the Hunter Medical Research Institute have linked up with international life sciences supply company Amersham BioSciences to establish a sophisticated analytical laboratory for research into personalised medicine.

The university and the Hunter Institute -- a 'virtual institute' of hospitals in the region -- have established the Amersham Biosciences Strategic Reference Centre in the university's Biomolecular Research Facility.

Amersham equipment in the centre comprises an Ettan-DIGE System for comparing protein profiles of normal and diseased tissues (said to be the first in an Australian university), a MALDI-TOF Pro mass spectrometer for rapid protein identification and detailed structural analysis, a MegaBACE-500 DNA analysis system for simultaneous processing of multiple DNA samples, a Typhoon-9410 for scanning of 2D electrophoresis gels, and an Ettan Spot Picker, for selecting significant protein spots for analysis.

Assoc Prof Alistair Sim, deputy head of the School of Biomedical Sciences and a senior researcher with HMRI, said the Amersham equipment was several orders of magnitude faster and more sensitive than the university's previous analytical equipment, and would enable researchers to analyse many genes and proteins simultaneously.

The university's researchers are working to understand and diagnose diseases including asthma, neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, and infertility and pregnancy complications.

Sim said the university chose the Amersham suite because it performed to the highest standard against its test samples.

One of the major attractions of the Amersham package, he said, was the company's readiness to work in partnership with researchers in the region. "As well as being a reference centre for their equipment, we will be jointly developing training programs to help researchers use it.

"We now have research tools that can move us towards identifying protein markers of disease, but personalised medicine is still a fair way into the future.

"Our approach is to develop protein profiles for particular diseases and determine how they vary between individuals, so we can develop systems to rapidly and efficiently profile hundreds of patients."

University researchers have already identified a key molecule, protein phosphatase 2A, that mediates the release of inflammatory compounds from mast cells in the lungs of asthmatics.

Sim said the presence of this protein in an individual's lung tissue protein profile could help diagnose asthma, but much more research was need before 'personalised medicine', including drug therapies tailored to the genetic profile of the individual, became practicable.

Sim said the Mothers and Babies Research Centre, which is part of the Hunter Medical Research Institute, had a research program aimed at developing protein profiles to identify serum markers of early labour and other complications of pregnancy.

He said one of the advantages of developing the diagnostic centre at the University of Newcastle was that the Hunter Valley's population was relatively non-mobile, giving researchers access to multiple generations of families. The region is ideal for research into population-based medicine, including studies of inherited disorders, he said.