Bruker and SISCAPA Assay Technologies Announce Second-Phase Collaboration Agreement

Bruker Corporation announced the start of a second-phase collaboration agreement with SISCAPA Assays Technologies, Inc. (SAT) at the 12th HUPO World Congress.

Bruker and SAT’s first phase of collaboration resulted in two publications. The first paper, published in the Journal of Proteome Research, demonstrated that a SISCAPA-MALDI workflow showed quantitative precision equal to or better than SISCAPA LC-MS/MS workflows, with the improved ease of use that comes from eliminating the need for LC and MS/MS. The second paper, published in the journal Clinical Chemistry, validated the quantitative precision for a larger cohort of samples of clinical relevance, measuring the endogenous levels of Protein C Inhibitor from serum samples of patients who had been treated for prostate cancer. A summary of this work will be presented in a poster at the 12thHuman Proteome Organization World Congress (HUPO).

Having confirmed the utility and quantitative precision of the SISCAPA-MALDI workflow, the second-phase collaboration will focus on a number of further developments involving the measurement of clinically useful biomarkers. All SISCAPA-MALDI assays are currently for research use only, and not for use in diagnostic procedures.

Bruker plans to establish fully automated SISCAPA-MALDI capabilities in its demonstration facilities, allowing interested customers to evaluate SISCAPA-MALDI instrumentation and workflows. The demo facility will also enable high-level applications and service support for such customers by Bruker personnel.

Assay Development: Additional SISCAPA assays will be validated and parameters, such as the limit of quantitation and limit of detection (LOQ/LOD), will be determined. Bruker and SAT also plan to enable third-party collaborators to develop SISCAPA-MALDI assays for accurate quantification of their own protein targets, for use in RUO and clinical research environments. Such assays would be useful for a diverse range of customers, e.g. those wishing to pursue protein quantitation for process optimization or large-scale clinical validation of protein biomarkers. Bruker and SAT also jointly plan to investigate the development of new assays for the SISCAPA-MALDI workflow. Of particular interest are assays of relevance to clinical microbiology, as the previous work has shown that such assays could be run on the benchtopmicroflex LT, the same mass spectrometer employed in the Bruker MALDI Biotyper. Successful validation and clearance for clinical use of such assays would immediately make them available to the more than 900 (and growing) clinical microbiology laboratories worldwide that already have a MALDI Biotyper installed.

Leigh Anderson, Ph.D., the CEO and founder of SAT, and inventor of SISCAPA, commented: “We are delighted to be working with Bruker, the leader in MALDI-TOF technology, to advance the precision and throughput of SISCAPA biomarker assays. Our joint papers demonstrate the very high precision of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for peptide quantitation using internal standards, and establish a solid basis for further exploring the utility of SISCAPA-MALDI-TOF MS in biomarker verification and preclinical research. As a company devoted to the development and application of SISCAPA assays, we are excited that Bruker is making the investment to bring the SISCAPA-MALDI workflow into its demonstration facilities, and that this will increase of the productivity of labs using SISCAPA and spur the adoption of SISCAPA assays by the biomarker research community.”

Dr. Detlev Suckau, Director of Proteomics at Bruker Daltonics, added: “The results of the joint work prove that MALDI-TOF is very suitable for peptide and protein quantification in the one- to five-percent CV range, and also for the validation of protein biomarkers in clinical research. With the early phase of this research completed, Bruker has the confidence in SAT and SISCAPA-MALDI MS to make a significant investment needed to bring the fully automated SISCAPA-MALDI MS workflow into our demonstration facilities. This will enableBruker, in partnership with SAT, to sell SISCAPA-MALDI MS to customers and to support the many enthusiastic early adopters who have expressed interest in this technology.”