SCIEX and the Children’s Medical Research Institute Announce Opening of ProCan to Advance Precision Medicine

SCIEX industrialised proteomics solutions, using microflow SWATH® Acquisition, will accelerate cancer research

Framingham, MA U.S.A. and Sydney, Australia — SCIEX, a global leader in life science analytical technologies, has announced that Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI) has opened ProCan™, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation International Centre for the Proteome of Human Cancer. The Centre has been set up through an alliance with SCIEX and will enable large-scale proteome studies that will advance cancer research and ultimately aid in the promise of precision medicine. The opening of the Centre was marked by the ProCan Industrialised Proteomics Centre Symposium, a two-day event. Highlights from the event, including scientific presentations and workshop videos, can be accessed in the SCIEX online symposium portal.

Prof. Roger Reddel (Director of CMRI and Head of Cancer research Unit), Prof. Phil Robinson (Head of Cell Signaling Unit and co-developer of ProCan), Dr. Christie Hunter (SCIEX Director of OMICs Applications), and Valentina Valova (Manager of Biomedical Proteomics Facility and ProCan, CMRI).

The ProCan project, which was established with a $10 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation and developed through partnership with SCIEX, will help to industrialise the process of analysing tissue samples and identifying cancer biomarkers. This is being achieved at the centre on a suite of SCIEX TripleTOF® systems using a tissue-based method developed at Ruedi Aebersold's lab at the ETH, Zurich, a method recently published in Nature Medicine. SCIEX SWATH® Acquisition technologies provide ProCan with exceptionally high sample throughput and will reduce the significant variability that is often associated with sample preparation. Furthermore, comprehensive data is produced with speed, sensitivity, quality, and reliability, that is urgently needed in precision medicine.

The large-scale proteome studies being carried out at the centre will profile thousands of tumour samples per year, to identify and develop markers of disease risk, diagnosis, response to therapy, and prognosis on an industrial scale, while developing standard operating procedures for other facilities around the globe.

The Centre is equipped with a large suite of SCIEX TripleTOF 6600 mass spectrometers and NanoLC™ 400 LC systems, to create one of the world's largest scale implementations of the SCIEX next-generation proteomics solution, featuring SWATH Acquisition and OneOmics cloud computing. Additionally, ProCan will also benefit from SCIEX's exclusive collaborators, including Pressure Biosciences (PBIO) and Beckman Coulter, using pressure cycling technology and liquid handling workstations for increased sample preparation, throughput, and reproducibility.

"This collaboration with SCIEX enables ProCan to advance our vision to scale-up the process of finding causes of cancers, which is essential for earlier diagnosis and the development of new and even personalized approaches," said Professor Phil Robinson, Head of the Cell Signalling Unit at CMRI and co-developer of ProCan. "The opening of this centre isn’t just an exciting milestone for us and for SCIEX, but it’s exciting for the advancement of precision medicine at-large, as the information generated by ProCan will ultimately be free for anyone to access, helping scientists all around the world with rapid diagnoses and treatment planning."

Jean-Paul Mangeolle, President of SCIEX states, "Many years of partnerships and work have helped bring ProCan to fruition. Working closely with world-renowned scientists and complementary cutting edge technologies is driving new innovations like never before, offering better solutions for accelerating cancer research. We at SCIEX are thrilled to be a part of this effort."

The Centre was officially opened in late 2016, with a ceremony during the ProCan Industrialised Proteomics Centre Symposium. At the conference, leading scientists on all components of the industrialised proteomics pipeline shared their insights, including Tiannan Gou (ETH, Zurich) and Phil Robinson (CMRI, ProCan).