In today's highly competitive market, pharmaceutical firms are under increasing pressure to make sure that discovery, development and research spending is as efficient and effective as possible.
Multiple biomarker analysis has emerged as one of the techniques used to identify promising candidates as early as possible, however, as RBM CEO Craig Benson explained, there are problems with the approach.
"Despite the known benefits of biomarkers in drug development, many biomarker discovery efforts fail to contribute because the patterns do not reproduce on a clinically validated platform.
“The RBM approach is to discover new biomarker patterns on the same platform that will be used in clinical trials," added Benson going on to say that the services had been developed in collaboration with pharma and biotech customers
The service, which uses RBM’s existing multi-analyte profiling platform, is made up of a panel of 189 biomarkers which are known to be important in the major disease indications for drug development.
DiscoveryMAP samples are processed on an industrialized, automated platform that enables the discovery of biomarker patterns made up of multiple proteins, many with small, yet reproducibly detected, changes.
Benson explained that any patterns discovered are then used to develop a biomarker panel for high-throughput processing in trials either as contract service by RBM or using kit made by the firm under good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards.
RBM has already used the DiscoveryMAP platform to discover several new diagnostic biomarker panels in collaboration with partners Psynova Neurotech, Satoris and several academic groups.
The Texan firm is currently seeking additional industrial collaborations to develop diagnostic panels and companion applications based on patterns detected with the system.