CPTC News

The 2nd Annual CPTC Meeting, Cambridge, Mass.
October 28-29, 2008

CPTC held its second annual meeting in Cambridge, Mass. on October 28–29, 2008, bringing together more than 200 participants representing the full gamut of scientific fields that contribute to the initiative’s mission.

Giving a sense of the links between CPTC and other technology focused initiatives supported by NCI, the first day of the meeting was held jointly with members of NCI’s Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies (IMAT) program (see http://imat.cancer.gov.) Several talks featured technologies and techniques developed by IMAT-supported investigators that have subsequently been applied to projects supported by CPTC, highlighting the importance of integrated technology development in cancer proteomics research in particular and in cancer research in general. The meeting also included talks and posters featuring research conducted through CPTC’s three components: the Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer (CPTAC) program, Advanced Proteomic Platforms and Computational Sciences, and the Proteomic Reagents and Resources Core.

Both days featured keynote addresses by researchers speaking on their experiences in integrated research. David Altshuler, M.D., Ph.D., a founding member of the Eli M. and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Director of the institute’s Program in Medical and Population Genetics, spoke of the lessons learned from conducting large-scale genomics research and how those lessons could apply to large-scale proteomics. Vamsi Mootha, M.D., of the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, focused on integrative genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic research on mitochondrial diseases.

In his closing remarks, CPTC Director Henry Rodriguez, Ph.D., M.B.A., noted that the initiative had produced some very good outputs since its launch two years ago. Rodriguez also mentioned that while there had been a learning curve associated with the initiative, they had shown that team-based science can be very successful, and that the steps that had been undertaken thus far had laid the groundwork for CPTC’s future success.

The third CPTC Annual Meeting will be held on October 5–7, 2009, in Bethesda, Md. Information on the meeting will be posted at http://proteomics.cancer.gov as it becomes available.


Reagent Data Portal Now Live
October 28, 2008

At the CPTC Annual Meeting on October 28-29, 2008, the initiative’s Proteomic Reagents and Resources Core announced the launch of the Reagent Data Portal, a Web-based service open to the scientific community that helps scientists search for and access antibodies from a collection of highly characterized mouse monoclonal antibodies for cancer-associated proteins. According to Tara Hiltke, Ph.D., a program manager at CPTC, “Users can perform a keyword or alphabetical search to look up a protein, see the antibodies available for it, see the characterization information for those antibodies, choose the one that best fits their needs, and seamlessly order it from the our repository at the University of Iowa’s Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank [DSHB].”

Please click here to visit the Reagent Data Portal.


Facilitating Data Sharing and Release in Proteomics
August 14, 2008

On August 14, 2008, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored a summit in Amsterdam for members of the international proteomics community, including representatives from funding agencies, journals, and academic research centers. The organizers included Henry Rodriguez, National Cancer Institute; Rolf Apweiler, European Bioinformatics Institute; Mike Snyder, Yale University; Henning Hermjacob; European Bioinformatics Institute; and Mathias Uhlen, KTH Biotechnology.

Their task: to begin defining policies and practices that would govern and facilitate the release of proteomic data into the public domain.

Data sharing is standard practice among members of the genomics community, based on principles developed at a 1996 gathering in Bermuda and ultimately endorsed by all major parties in the Human Genome Project. The widespread sharing of prepublication sequence data greatly accelerated the pace of genomic discovery. However, similar policies do not exist for proteomics research, a state of affairs currently seen as a significant obstacle to progress in the field.

A white paper based on the discussions of the summit is forthcoming.


2007 SBIR Contract Recipients Announced
July 2008

Through the SBIR program, CPTC aims to integrate its efforts with those of the biotechnology industry by encouraging and enabling companies developing proteomic technologies and platforms to adopt standardized, well-characterized reagents in prototype development, testing, optimization, product assembly, and commercialization of new tools and kits for the cancer community. In 2007, six small businesses were awarded SBIR contracts:

Development of Clinical Automated Multiplex Affinity Capture Technology for Detecting Low Abundance Cancer-related Proteins/Peptides

Meso Scale Diagnostics

Automated Multi-Array Platform for Cancer Biomarkers

Sequenom Inc.

Sensitive Protein Detection Combining Mass Spectrometry

Quadraspec Inc.

Highest Sensitivity Cancer Marker Array on Quadraspec's Bio-CD Platform

Rules-Based Medicine Inc.

Automated Multiplexed Immunoassays for Rapid Quantification of Low Abundance Cancer-Related Proteins

Development of Alternative Affinity Capture Reagents for Cancer Proteomics Research

Allele Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals

Yeast Single Chain Antibodies as Capture Reagents

Accacia International Inc.

High-Throughput of Aptamers against Cancer Biomarkers