Biomarkers and Cancer: Predicting Future Patterns of Disease
The topic of the first The Biotechnology Initiative breakfast meeting of the 2008-2009 session held on September 18th was on the development of tools and methods for discovering novel cancer biomarkers.
The first presenter was Dr. Terry Sills, VP, Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network who spoke on the best practices used in “biobanking” serum and other patient samples that are used for diagnostic biomarker studies. The need for a consolidated effort to collect and store serum and other patient samples here in Toronto was made clear. Dr. Sills covered how creating a unified patient sample biobank would provide the infrastructure to perform retrospective and prospective biomarker trials. He went on to explain how this would benefit the cancer biomarker community in Toronto by enabling local researchers access to patient samples to validate their biomarker candidates.
The second presenter was Paul Smith, VP Sales & Business Planning, Axela who talked about the dotLab system produced by Axela. He spoke on how the dotLab system is capable of optimizing assay conditions and determining which reagents used in an assay, such as antibodies, aptamers, proteins and even viruses may be selected through their binding constants. He spoke on how the system is both sensitive and high throughput with wide applications in the biomarker discovery and assay development field.
The meeting was attended by over 100 members of the life science community, with many from the diagnostic and cancer biomarker field. There was lively discussion after each presentation and excellent networking at the end. It was an excellent chance to meet members of the life science community involved in biomarker discovery.
Girish Sardana, Ph.D.
Research Associate,
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute,
Mount Sinai Hospital,
Toronto, Ontario, M5T 3L9
girish.sardana@utoronto.ca
