Applied Biosystems Expands Line of Labeling Chemistry Reagents to Help Improve Proteomics Research

Applied Biosystems has announced an expansion of its line of labeling chemistry reagents used for proteomics research in academic and biopharmaceutical laboratories.

The 8plex version of Applied Biosystems’ iTRAQ® reagents is designed to double the existing capacity for discovering proteins and comparing protein levels between biological samples that support biomarker discovery. Among the organizations that are using these reagents as part of an early access program are Biogen Idec and BG Medicine.

Applied Biosystems claims that the increased capacity enabled by the new iTRAQ reagents can give researchers the ability to obtain higher throughput and efficiency in conducting their biomarker discovery than label-free methods or other approaches using reagents with limited multiplexing capacity.

The reagents are intended to make the process of biomarker discovery productive and to increase the scale of experiments conducted by research laboratories.

“Academic and biopharmaceutical researchers have the opportunity to build upon the success of biomarker discovery research by improving the way they conduct comparative proteomic experiments going forward,” said Charles Purtell, senior director for Applied Biosystems’ consumables business within the proteomics and small molecule division.

“Applied Biosystems is delivering new tools for proteomics researchers to identify and quantify more proteins of interest with improved statistical confidence and more quickly than existing approaches.” Purtell added.