Precision Antibody(TM) has been selected as the antibody developer for a component of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)'s Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer (CPTC), which is focused on improving the number and standardizing the quality of monoclonal antibody reagents available for clinical cancer proteomics research. The contract award is the result of a third solicitation for contract proposals from custom antibody suppliers as part of the Clinical Proteomic Reagents Resources component of the CPTC, whose mission is to develop high-quality, standardized, renewable reagents that are needed for effective proteomic analysis.
The contract is awarded to private companies through a competitive bidding process managed by Science Applications International Corporation-Frederick (SAIC-F), a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC that operates the National Cancer Institute's leading center for cancer and AIDS research in Frederick, Maryland.
NCI's CPTC is a five-year, $104 million initiative to develop new proteomics tools and technologies that will accelerate discovery and clinical research in cancer. The antibody initiative of the CPTC's Clinical Proteomic Reagents Resource project was launched in late 2007 to address a major obstacle hindering the progress of proteomics research: The relatively small number of antibodies generated against proteins of interest, and their generally variable quality. The goal of the antibody initiative is to develop a standardized resource of very high-quality reference antibodies generated against cancer-related proteins of interest that will be made available to proteomics researchers, along with characterization data and other information intended to support replication and standardization.
"We are very pleased that SAIC-Frederick has selected Precision Antibody to contribute to this important initiative," said Jun Hayashi, Ph.D., Vice President of Precision Antibody. "Our goal is to rapidly develop and optimize antibodies for the target cancer-related antigens we have been assigned, which will help accelerate the NCI's creation of a public resource of gold-standard antibodies to advance proteomics research."
The terms of the contract call for Precision Antibody to apply its proprietary rapid antibody-generation technology to develop three monoclonal antibodies against each of 20 cancer-related target antigens produced by Argonne National Laboratory that have been identified to be of high interest to the cancer proteomics community. Other terms were not disclosed.