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07.03.2009 5th Biomarker workshop at the NMI in Reutlingen another success

Prof. Dr. Siegfried Neumann (Senior Consultant R+D, Merck KGaA) who chaired the event reminded everyone that in many biomarker approaches “we are still in the infant stage”. He highlighted the significance of research and development in the area as something from which we will all benefit from at some point in our lives. The Chairman also emphasised recurring ideas which included the hurdles associated with the implementation of biomarker research in clinical application and reminded the audience of the long road ahead while also addressing the potential socio-economic impact of biomarker applications.

Increasing use of biomarkers in research and medicine

The different applications of biomarkers were represented adequately by speakers’ topics and included psychiatric, allergic and autoimmune disease diagnostics, as well as possible prognostic and therapeutic applications. Sabine Bahn (MD PhD MRC Psych), visiting from the University of Cambridge, depicted the challenges associated with the diagnosis of schizophrenia and associated psychiatric disorders and introduced her laboratory’s unique combination of computing, bioscience technology and multi-omics studies. Per Mattson (PhD) of Uppsala University and Phadia AB presented applications in allergic and autoimmune diseases, stressing the need for prognostics for the progression of diseases such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis as well as presenting Phadia’s IVD laboratory system and multiplexed test. Prof. Dr. Dr. Kai Zacharowski of the Hospital of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Medicine and Pain Therapy in Frankfurt discussed the role of fibrin fragments in reperfusion injury and his group’s studies concerning applications.

A continuing methodological discourse

Much of the presentations at the workshops offered an opportunity to discuss methodological issues. These were supplemented by the audience’s critical questions. Prof. Dr. Thomas Herget of Merck KGaA presented methodological issues based on toxicology biomarkers which ensure the safety of drug candidates using WideScreen™ bead-based assays. Stefan Stevanovic (PhD) from the Department of Immunology at the University of Tübingen jumped in on short notice to present his research on HLA ligands and brought up the issue of individualised treatment, which appeared several times in the discussion. The methodological complexity of biomarker research came up again in Thomas Werner’s (PhD) presentation, CEO of Genomatix Software GmbH. Werner emphasised the complexity of the biological context by discussing his approach of focusing on regulatory networks associated with a certain situation as a starting point. The field of quantitative proteomics was addressed by Dr. Friedrich Lottspeich from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemisty who also spoke of the complexity that makes significant quantitative data hardly available and introduced the potential of individualised proteomics approaches as an alternative.

Opportunities for microarray technologies

The NMI’s very own Dr. Thomas Joos brought the workshop to a well-rounded conclusion by offering an outlook on the future of protein microarrays. His presentation brought the group back to the essential aspects of reliability, sensitivity and cost-effectiveness in diagnostics applications. Joos introduced the use of whole blood stimulation assays in combination with a Multi-Analyte Profiling approach.

For further information about the workshop visit www.biochipnet.com.

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