Thermo Fisher Scientific, AstraZeneca to Collaborate on Biomarker Discovery

Thermo Fisher Scientific announced new collaborations of the Thermo Fisher Precision Medicine Science Center (PMSC) with AstraZeneca and the University of Nebraska Medical Center as part of its ongoing development of innovative solutions for unmet needs in clinical biomarker discovery. The new alliances strengthen the PMSC’s mission of creating standardized workflows with pharma and academic partners to streamline the transition from biomarker research to clinical implementation, creating new opportunities for precision medicine.

Ongoing and planned studies with both AstraZeneca and the University of Nebraska Medical Center will utilize standardized plasma protein profiling workflows, including Thermo Fisher’s newly developed ultra-high throughput plasma protein profiling (uHTPPP) workflow, for biomarker discovery, for a range of conditions. The standardized workflows consist of automated sample preparation for untargeted and targeted methods in combination with the Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 480 and Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometers.

"Precision medicine is becoming a greater area of interest across a range of different diseases and has, therefore, faced challenges effectively scaling to meet clinical needs," said Emily Chen, senior director, Precision Medicine Science Center, Thermo Fisher Scientific. "The goal of the Precision Medicine Science Center is to construct end-to-end workflow solutions that generate impactful data from discovery studies with large human cohorts and to harness the power of molecular profiling to improve the outcomes of patient care. Our ongoing work with AstraZeneca and the University of Nebraska Medical Center are paramount to realizing the potential of these technologies."

"Powered by technological innovation, omics is proving to be one of the richest sources of data in all of science. Clinical proteomics is an emerging field aimed at improving patient care through the development of sensitive, high-throughput methods for in-depth proteomic characterization of clinical samples. This collaboration aims to evaluate and establish a model for clinical proteomics, using advanced sample processing and downstream analytical applications, that has the potential to help us identify new drug targets and biomarkers," Ventzi Hristova, senior scientist, dynamic omics, antibody discovery and protein engineering, R&D at AstraZeneca, said.