The University of Manchester and SCIEX opened the £18m Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre on June 14th

SWATH® Acquisition-based next-generation proteomics technology promises to make “industrial” proteomics a reality

Left to right Dan Daniel, Executive Vice President of Danaher, Aaron Hudson, Sr. Director of Clinical Diagnostics, SCIEX, Jean-Paul Mangeolle, President, SCIEX, and Christie Hunter, Director of Global Technical Marketing, SCIEX

The Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre, which was funded by a philanthropic gift from the Stoller Charitable Trust, the Medical Research Council and developed in partnership with SCIEX, will help to industrialize the process of identifying and utilizing protein biomarkers. With a large number of SCIEX LC-MS systems, the Centre is one of the biggest clinical proteomics facilities in the world, spearheading a series of biomarker development projects and international collaborations. It is helping to identify and develop markers of disease risk, diagnosis, response to therapy and prognosis on an industrial scale, aiding in the translation of biomarkers into the clinical lab.

SCIEX’s proteomics systems have been selected to deliver the comprehensive data that is so urgently needed in precision medicine. SCIEX’s patented SWATH® technology enables the quantification of thousands of proteins across large sample sets with a level of data completeness, quantitative accuracy, and reproducibility that was only previously achievable with ‘gold-standard’ targeted multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) methods. The SWATH® next-generation proteomics technology will allow University scientists to collaborate with health companies and the National Health Service (NHS) to produce a greater number of tests and treatments, ultimately accelerating the process of eliminating many of the most serious illnesses faced today.

Professor Tony Whetton is the Director of the new Centre, and said: “The Centre is a major step forward in Precision Medicine. Essentially this is the future of healthcare – getting the right treatment to the right person at the right time and in the right dose. Without biomarkers we won’t be able to identify which people will benefit from certain medicines, so this new centre underpins everything we’re doing in precision medicine in Manchester and beyond.”

The Stoller Biomarker Centre is located at CityLabs Manchester, in the midst of biotechnology companies, the Central Manchester University Hospitals, National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust and The University of Manchester. The new Centre houses a large suite of high-end SCIEX mass spectrometers for targeted next-generation proteomics, including TripleTOF® 6600 Systems with SWATH® Acquisition, QTRAP® 6500+ Systems, and the SCIEX Lipidyzer™ Platform. The University of Manchester has also invested in a number of liquid chromatography and automated sample preparation components for the Centre, from SCIEX and other Danaher life science companies, such as Beckman Coulter’s Biomek NXP Laboratory Automated Workstation.

“SCIEX’s mission of innovating integrated, reliable analytical tools to gain scientific understandings that lead to better health, enables our customers to advance precision medicine with scale and speed like never before,” states Jean-Paul Mangeolle, President of SCIEX. “And it takes more than providing great instruments to be part of a movement as important as Precision Medicine; it takes strong collaborations with customers, partnerships with industry leaders and teamwork with our colleagues at other Danaher Corporation life companies, to establish and deploy the most comprehensive proteomics solutions.”

The Centre was officially opened at the event attended by Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, Sir Norman Stoller and trustees of the Stoller Charitable Trust, and Dan Daniel, Executive Vice President of Danaher, with a ceremony during the Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre Symposium. At the conference, leading speakers from around the globe shared their insights into key topics surrounding precision medicine, including pioneers within the field such as Dr Leroy Hood, Dr Leigh Anderson, and Professor Jennifer Van Eyk.

Professor Rothwell said: “Manchester has become a major hub for precision medicine and proteomics and we are very grateful to the funders who have backed the cutting-edge work that is carried out by our scientists. As a result of their generosity, The Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre will start work on addressing some of the biggest issues in medicine in an environment where these discoveries can move quickly to improve people’s lives.”