BlueGnome Announces First Shipment of New Cancer Microarrays
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BlueGnome, a leading supplier of microarray systems, announced today the first shipments of its new cancer platform; CytoChip CCMC. Microarrays are widely used to screen human DNA for abnormalities associated with developmental delay, dysmorphia and other genetic diseases, where the abnormality is carried by every cell in the body. Their use for cancer research is however more challenging as the genetic changes associated with cancer are different in every cell and may vary depending upon the type of cancer, its stage of development, the age and genotype of the patient and exactly which cells are used in the investigation.
To address these challenges the Cancer Cytogenomics Microarray Consortium (CCMC) has developed a standard microarray design in order to improve the comparability of results obtained from different laboratories. As Marilyn Li, M.D., FACMG, Professor, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine and President of the CCMC explained ‘We are aiming to develop a platform-neutral standard cancer microarray design which will be used to create a public cancer microarray database to support cancer genome research and to facilitate the application of microarray technology in cancer diagnosis in CLIA certified laboratories.’
BlueGnome’s new cancer platform combines the CCMC array design with the company’s leading BlueFuse database and analysis software. As CEO Nick Haan explained, ‘BlueFuse is used by microarray laboratories in over 30 countries because it generates results fully automatically and stores them in a single database, together with the experimental conditions and the latest information on how abnormalities might be linked to the underlying disease. By combining these capabilities with the new CCMC design we believe we can give cancer research a major boost by standardizing results and interpretation within our customer laboratories and then providing facilities to share them with other CCMC members.’
BlueGnome has already received orders for the CytoChip CCMC platform from multiple laboratories in both the United States and Europe. Nick Haan confirmed that the company is planning further developments in the New Year, ‘We see the availability of the CCMC array as the start of a very exciting development. We are already applying our expertise in advanced mathematics and data visualization to deliver a suite of new algorithms which will enable researchers to identify the relevant information hidden in the massive amount of raw data that is delivered by the CCMC microarrays .’
Release of the CytoChip CCMC platform ends an exciting year from BlueGnome which has seen the widespread adoption of the company’s 24sure technology and a top 25 placing in the Deloitte UK Fast 50 list of the UK’s fastest growing companies for the second year running.
