Medical Device Daily Contributing Writer And MDDs

NORWICH, UK – Recent efforts to optimize metabolomics technology is beginning to bear fruit in the discovery of novel biomarkers for disease. In general, the concentrations of metabolites are amplified relative to the proteins that prompted their formation, making them potentially more sensitive, both in diagnostics and as drug targets, than protein biomarkers.

“Metabolites are downstream from the protein, so you must have an amplification in concentration,” Douglas Kell, director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology , said here at the British Association Science Festival last week. “Furthermore, you don't need to know the gene sequence, there are fewer metabolites than proteins, and they are generic, so once you can measure a metabolite, it is the same in every organism – which is not the case for proteins.”

It has been estimated that there are about 3,000 metabolites in the human metabolome. The issue is that there is a wide concentration range and it is very difficult to detect metabolites that occur at low concentrations.

Kell's group has developed an automated “robot scientist” that couples gas chromatography separation to mass spectrometry detection, and has optimized and refined the equipment to the point where it can discriminate 1,800 true metabolites.

Using the robot, blood samples from healthy and affected individuals have been analyzed to systematically uncover subsets of metabolites that are markers of particular diseases. For example, examining samples from women affected by pre-eclampsia in pregnancy and those who were not led to the discovery of three metabolites that distinguish sufferers.

“None of the [three metabolites] was visible [with our equipment] when we started; it is only as we improved the process that they were detected,” Kell said.

Currently, pregnant women are sifted out as being at risk of pre-eclampsia by measuring blood pressure. “But this is more than a surrogate for blood pressure: You can look in the affected cohort only and follow the development of the disease,” Kell said. More recently his group has found further metabolites linked to pre-eclampsia, making the biomarkers potentially even more sensitive.

Kell has discovered metabolites for Huntington's disease and for a number of cardiovascular diseases, also. “Many of these offer the possibility of novel interventions and of prognostic detection of diseases in their earliest stages, before they become life threatening,” Kell said.

Avitar tests to be used in DRUID Project

Avitar (Canton, Massachusetts), developer of a rapid, on-site, oral fluid-based screening test for drugs-of-abuse, reported that it has been selected to participate in the European Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DRUID) Project.

Under the DRUID project, oral fluid screening devices will be tested under operational police conditions by police forces in Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and Finland.

“Avitar is pleased to be asked to participate in this important project, which is being conducted under the direction of the European Traffic Police Organization (TISPOL),” said Pete Phildius, Avitar's CEO and chairman. “As with workplace random drug testing in the United States, point-of-care [POC] oral fluid-based technology is being recognized as a key element in addressing the growing international drugged driving problem.”

Avitar said that non-invasive POC technology, specifically oral fluid-based devices, in combination with applications such as road-side drug testing, is anticipated to be the catalyst for growth. It cited research from Frost & Sullivan saying that by 2009, 33% of all drugs of abuse tests (will be performed on the POC format.

Varian donates radiography equipment

A radiography skills center recently opened in London, backed by equipment donated by Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, California), a developer of radiotherapy systems for the treatment of cancer. The Saad Centre for Radiography Clinical Skills Education will provide a boost in training future radiotherapy radiographers.

Varian donated 10 Eclipse treatment planning systems (TPS) which enable oncologists to plan advanced treatments using the latest radiotherapy techniques such as image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).

The new facility, the first in the south of England, has been made possible by investments from London's City University , the Saad Group from Saudi Arabia and Varian.

Michael Sandhu, Varian's European director of public/private partnerships, said, “This new center will be a major resource in training radiotherapy radiographers of the future and we are proud to support such a vital and worthwhile project. More trained radiographers mean more staff to run the additional treatment machines acquired in the UK in recent years, and this will greatly benefit the country's cancer patients in the future.”