Melbourne's HealthLinx signs assay deal with Bruker

Melbourne-based health-management house HealthLinx has signed a collaboration agreement with US clinical proteomics company Bruker Daltonics to develop a multiplex, in vitro diagnostic (IVD) assay for ovarian cancer.

Bruker Daltonics is a major developer of proteomics and mass spectrometry systems. Under the agreement, HealthLinx will develop a range of prognostic IVD assays based on protein-expression patterns specific to particular cancers.

The monoclonal antibodies for disease-specific biomarkers in serum, will be delivered with Bruker's ClinProt platform technology.

HealthLinx licenses in cancer biomarkers identified by specialist research agencies. It has recently contracted the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne to develop monoclonal antibodies for a set of biomarkers associated with early to mid-stage ovarian cancers, and is working on another panel of markers for breast cancer.

HealthLinx CEO Nick Gatsios described Bruker's ClinProt platform as a "magnificent technology" for cancer research, and said it would eventually be used by pathology services to detect early signs of cancer.

"[HealthLinx CSO, Greg Rice of the Baker Heart Institute] and I felt Bruker had the best platform to undertake pure biomarker discovery," Gatsios said.

"It allows you to identify key peaks related to specific diseases, then drill straight into the peak to identify biomarker peptides. We can then go immediately into antibody design and production.

"It cuts down the time required to develop an antibody to a marker by at least tenfold, without the requirement to use 2D gels."

Once identified and validated, the biomarker peptides are used to develop monoclonal antibodies; the antibodies are conjugated to fluorescent compounds and mounted on tiny magnetic beads. The ClinProt system recovers and analyses the magnetic beads for the presence -- or absence -- of a diagnostic pattern of biomarkers, then automatically and simultaneously looks for the presence or absence of a specific pattern of cancer biomarkers, each glowing a different colour, in patients' serum samples.

The ovarian cancer assay is based on four different serum biomarkers. Gatsios said each protein must be clinically validated as a reliable biomarker before it can be incorporated in the multiplex assay.

He said a breast cancer assay would be next, followed by prostate, cervical and colorectal cancer assays. In time, the company also planned to develop multiplex assays for cardiovascular disease.

"There are several reasons why we chose the ClinProt platform," Gatsios said. "We're going down the serum assay path because it's less invasive. The chemistry they use on their polymer beads is similar to the chemistry one would use in an ELISA multiplex device.

"The time required to deliver our products to market will be greatly reduced, given that diagnostic marker systems are moving away from multi-ELISA systems towards mass spectrometry systems.

"The ClinProt multiplex system is very accurate -- you get 95 to 99 per cent specificity for particular cancers."

Bruker Daltonics VP, Clive Seymour, said the ClinProt system was particularly suited to early diagnosis of different types of cancer, and oncology research. "[It] substantially increases the ability of cancer and other clinical researchers to discovery, identify and validate new mass spectrometry based multi-marker panels with potentially higher disease specificity," Seymour said.