Thermo Fisher Scientific has equipped the UK's Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) with a complete proteomics workflow, including a Kingfisher Flex automated sample preparation system, a TSQ Vantage triple quadrupole and the UK's first two LTQ Orbitrap Velos mass spectrometers. This workflow is said to provide powerful capabilities to meet the needs of the ICR's demanding research goals.
"Typically, cancer research focuses on the function and behaviour of individual genes or proteins," says Dr Rune Linding, head of the cellular and molecular logic team at the ICR. "The ICR aims to assess how networks of cancer cells interact with each other and surrounding tissues to metastasize or spread throughout the body.
"By modelling and simulating how cancer cells interact within the larger biological network, ICR researchers hope to achieve breakthroughs leading to new drugs or treatments that prevent metastasis - the process that claims the lives of about 90% of cancer patients."
Dr Linding said the LTQ Orbitrap Velos and TSQ Vantage systems enable the ICR to analyse new aspects of cellular signalling networks and perform massive scale studies of the dynamics in these networks.
Professor Chris Marshall, chairman of the ICR's cell and molecular biology section, added: "We think the integration of data from mass spectrometry analysis with other data, such as genetic RNAi screens, will allow us to generate detailed models of processes such as invasion and metastasis. Such a detailed understanding is important to start treating the signalling network as a whole rather than individual nodes, an approach known as network medicine."
The collaboration involves a number of Thermo Fisher Scientific solutions, including laboratory equipment, silencing RNA, protein reagents, mass spectrometry and related services.