PFI: Partnerships for Biomarker Research and Innovation Enabled by a Flow Cytometry Center

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This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI)project--a Type III (A:C) partnership between Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences (KGI), a NSF PFI graduate (0332749), and Harvey Mudd College (HMC), an institution new to the PFI Program (defined as one that has never been a PFI grantee)--seeks to establish a Center for Biomarkers Research at KGI, with a state-of-the-art flow cytometry facility in order to accelerate discovery and commercialization of new disease-specific biomarkers for rare human diseases. The focus on rare diseases is important because routine commercialization pathways neglect this area. The Center will help take risk out of the development of drugs that treat rare diseases by working with patient advocacy groups and disease foundations to identify biomarkers in affected patient populations. Partnering with the National Organizations for Rare Diseases (NORD), rare disease organizations that have access to patient samples will be identified and collaborative operations will be explored. Human samples obtained from rare disease populations will be processed in the flow cytometry facility. Proteins involved in signaling pathways will be identified by flow cytometry using fluorescent antibodies. Cytometry results will be analyzed with a Bayesian network approach to identify central molecules in signal transduction that might be determinative disease biomarkers. These activities will facilitate biomarker discovery and provide a means of classifying and stratifying disease populations Through the choice of rare diseases as a focus for biomarker discovery, the project will achieve a broader impact on the development of needed treatments. The Center will create a database of rare disease biomarkers and assist disease organizations in their venture philanthropic efforts to help remove risk, based on biomarker applications. Biomarkers highly discriminating for specific conditions will be identified for patenting and subsequent licensing activity. The entire database of biomarkers will also be accessible to the academic and corporate communities for subsequent data mining. Ideally, companies interested in further developing these data sets will initiate new projects. Also, the project will meet a critical work need: the education of translational scientists, individuals who can translate a discovery into commercial products. The Center will educate Master of Bioscience (MBS) students at KGI and undergraduate engineering students at HMC in the development of diagnostic tools from biomarkers discovery.Partners at the inception of the project are Academic Institutions: Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences (KGI) (lead institution), and Harvey Mudd College (HMC); and Private Sector Organizations: Beckman Coulter, Inc (BCI) and The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD).