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Cancer
Cancer research spans a wide spectrum from basic research in academia to post market monitoring of FDA approved therapies.
TRAC has been used successfully in cancer research including biomarker screening, signaling pathway mapping, inflammation research, monitoring the effects of gene silencing (RNAi), and many other more specific areas of investigation. TRAC can also be used to characterize the disease states and to examine how gene expression changes as the disease progresses.
Literature
Metabolism
Numerous challenges face diabetes researchers. Energy metabolism disorders are complex multi-tissue and multigenic diseases. Research strategies often incorporate gene knockout/downs and different diet regimes and extended sampling over time. The tissues tested are muscle, adipose and liver. Large numbers of samples are the rule in these experimental designs. The scientist often compromises on the numbers of genes examined in the protocol because of labor and cost issues. The PlexPress value proposition for gene expression analysis enables researchers to better understand the mechanism of action of biological systems. This is done through broadening the experimental design to consider the impact of multiple changes of the biological state on expression behavior which can be done with precision and cost-effectively.
An example of this approach is work done by Metabolex that was presented at the 2009 Society for Biomolecular Screening conference in Lille France. The result: a new biomarker, new hypothesis and a new target.
The study investigated the interactive impact of genes, diet, knock -outs, and tissue types on metabolic processes. TRAC enabled a 4 dimensional, 240 cluster (representing 240 biological states or conditions) experimental design generating 10,560 data points. Previously this experiment was not contemplated due to resource constraints, prohibitive cost and comparability issues across tests. With precise data from TRAC all normalized to a common reference, a candidate marker was observed by comparing just 2 of the 240 biological states created by the test design. The results led to a new lipogenesis MOA (mechanism of action) including a target for metabolism control. The information value delivered by the experiment exemplifies the primary benefit TRAC provides users - with testing done cost-effectively in 4 hours.
