BioPark and ABS Laboratories are pleased to announce that from April 1st 2010, a new, ‘open access’ biomarker assay service will be available at BioPark, the science park in Welwyn Garden City.

We will offer:

• A full biomarker assay service for clients - small or large batches.
• An assisted service - clients pay for use of the facility to perform assays themselves using their own consumables, but after training and under appropriate supervision.
• The opportunity for clients to pay for use of the facility in order to develop their own assays for novel biomarkers, but after training and under appropriate supervision.

The facility will utilise a Meso Scale Discovery® (MSD) Multi-Array® detection unit, ‘MSD SECTOR® Imager 6000’ to read a wide range of single and multiplex kits to enable quantification of biomarkers, cell signalling pathways and immunogenicity assays. The detector unit is based on electro-chemiluminescence technology, the assay kits also being provided by MSD®. This platform has become the industry standard within many
large pharmaceutical companies for supporting in-vitro, preclinical and clinical drug discovery and development.

In preclinical studies the assay of various cytokines that indicate hepatic and kidney toxicity are popular and using the MSD assay platform these can be ‘multiplexed’ i.e. up to 10 biomarkers can be measured simultaneously using as little as 25μL of plasma.

In addition, the MSD assay platform can also be applied to clinical R&D. As with preclinical studies, there are assays available to evaluate a drug’s toxicity in humans plus assays to support R&D into a range of therapeutic areas such as metabolic syndrome, inflammation, Alzheimer’s Disease, oncology and many more.

We are grateful to the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) for providing funding to establish this new facility at BioPark.

To discuss the use of this facility or obtain more information then please contact Bill Sprigings at BioPark This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Mira Doig at ABS Laboratories This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .