Two British Columbian life sciences organizations collaborate to optimize development of blood tests for patients with chronic organ disease

September 26, 2012; Vancouver, BC – The Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF Centre) and MRM Proteomics are collaborating to bring new diagnostic blood tests which will help clinicians manage patients with heart, lung and kidney disease more effectively.

The PROOF Centre – a not-for-profit organization focused on developing blood tests for chronic organ disease – and MRM Proteomics, a contract research organization, are integrating their expertise to create an end-to-end solution that uses protein signatures in the blood to predict the onset and progression of heart, lung, and kidney disease.

The PROOF Centre’s award-winning computational pipeline will be applied to guide the experimental design, and data quality control and analysis needed for the identification of protein signatures that can be used with other molecular signals to indicate heart, lung, and kidney disease. With its highly-skilled computation team of database specialists, clinical statisticians, bioinformaticians and computer and systems scientists, the PROOF Centre will support the analysis process from front-end experimental design to downstream statistical and biological analysis.

“This is a great way to begin to harness the strengths of the internationally-recognized computation capabilities that we’ve built up over the past few years,” says Dr. Bruce McManus, Director of the PROOF Centre. “Through this collaboration, MRM Proteomics’ expertise and leading technology will help us bring these tests to the clinic faster, ultimately helping improve patient care and lower heath costs.”

MRM Proteomics specializes in the absolute quantification of proteins in complex biological fluids such as blood and urine using Multiple Reaction Monitoring -Mass Spectrometry (MRM-MS). Their PeptiQuant™ MRM assays allow for the absolute quantification of hundreds of proteins at a time with unparalleled specificity and sensitivity, from a single drop of blood. These services lead to faster results for lower costs and sample volumes than other protein biomarker quantification methods.

“Our organizations’ offerings are clearly complementary in the field of protein biomarker discovery and validation.” said Andrew Munk, President and CEO of MRM Proteomics. “The discovery, validation and implementation of biosignatures are complex processes. Partnering with the PROOF Centre will provide our customers with access to the PROOF Centre’s internationally recognised computational tools and capabilities to optimize the design and analysis of their mass spec based proteomic biomarker studies.”

About MRM Proteomics

MRM Proteomics is a leader in providing advanced protein quantitation and proteomic services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics industries in key areas such as biomarker discovery/validation, clinical studies, diagnostics and toxicology. Information about MRM Proteomics is available at www.mrmproteomics.com.

About the PROOF Centre

The Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF Centre) accelerates the development of new blood tests to improve all aspects of care for patients with heart, lung and kidney disease. The PROOF Centre is a cross-disciplinary engine of partners representing academia, health care, government, industry, patients and the public, focused on improving health and reducing the enormous socioeconomic burden of heart, lung and kidney disease. The PROOF Centre is a not-for-profit society established in March 2008 by competitive funding from the Networks of Centres of Excellence Secretariat under the Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (NCE CECR) Program. The PROOF Centre is co-hosted by the University of British Columbia and Providence Health Care in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For more information, visit www.proofcentre.ca.

For any further information, please contact:

Janet Wilson-McManus, BSc, MT (ASCP)
Chief Operating officer
PROOF Centre of Excellence
T 604-806-8328
E Janet.Wilson-McManus@hli.ubc.ca

Andrew Munk, Ph.D
President and CEO
MRM Proteomics Inc.
T 604-800-2296 ext. 6851
E munk@mrmproteomics.com