A medical technology company has licensed a method of studying tumours which substitutes a monofunctional platinum complex for enzymes for use in its microarray platform.

Aligent will use the system in its comparative genomic hydbridisation micoarray platform to enable medics to study preserved tumour samples that would otherwise have been too degraded to study.

Once the technology, which has been developed by Kreatech, has been incorporated into Aligent's devices it will allow doctors to examine DNA from an estimated 400 million formalin-fixed-paraffin-embedded preserved tissue samples.

"This new capability holds tremendous promise for cancer researchers," said Jay Kaufman, Agilent's marketing director for Genomics.

"Now researchers can enjoy reproducible results on an oligo microarray platform, looking at old preserved and often degraded samples which are annotated with clinical histories. In many cases, this DNA is only available in a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded form so the products and methods Agilent is now offering will considerably reduce previous limitations."

The Kreatech Universal Linkage Systems is more efficient than enzyme-based microarray platforms since it harnesses the stable coordinate binding properties of platinum to nucleic acids and proteins.

Meanwhile, the technology's employment of a simple single-tube protocol means that experiments cost less to conduct.

Sources:

Agilent to 'turn back time' on preserved tumour samples, 10/07/07
http://www.labtechnologist.com/news/ng.asp?n=78068-agilent-kreatech-acgh-microarray-uls">http://www.labtechnologist.com/news/ng.asp?n=78068-agilent-kreatech-acgh-microarray-uls

Agilent Technologies Licenses Kreatech Technology, Enabling First CGH Microarrays Optimized for FFPE Samples, 11/07/07
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070709005393&newsLang=en

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