October 31, 2008: WaferGen Biosystems Inc., a developer of gene expression, genotyping, cell biology, and stem cell research systems, announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a team of researchers at University of Pittsburgh a ~$3 million grant to conduct novel gene expression research in the area of lung disease involving WaferGen’s SmartChip Real-Time PCR System. This research team, led by Naftali Kaminski, Steven Shapiro, and Frank Sciurba, will apply gene expression profiling to lung samples from patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
WaferGen’s SmartChip platform will be used to validate the researcher’s gene expression.
The SmartChip Real-Time PCR System provides a number of ease-of-use features including content-ready, high-density chips containing 30,000-100,000 nano-wells with gene panels optimized for cancer, toxicology and whole genome. The user-friendly SmartChip Real-Time PCR System will be preloaded with some of the reaction components. At the same time, the system will only require a very small sample size as compared to other technologies and platforms and will offer real-time detection and sophisticated read-out options while assuring detection sensitivity and temperature uniformity across chips.
Additionally, this NIH-funded research will include the development and application of the PulmoSmartChip, a custom designed SmartChip molecular phenotyping assay for COPD and IPF. The PulmoSmartChip, which will include the lowest number of genes that distinguish all phenotypes of IPF and COPD, will be used to identify and validate module networks capable of predicting the natural history of the diseases and patients’ response to specific therapeutics. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh believe that the availability of these modules, as well as the validated PulmoSmartChip assay that allows their measurement using parallel quantitative real-time PCR, will be a significant step in laying the foundations for the introduction of personalized medicine approaches in pulmonary medicine.
“The decision by the NIH to fund this important gene expression research at the University of Pittsburgh represents a critical step for WaferGen and our SmartChip platform. We are pleased by the decision made by our collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh to involve the SmartChip Real- Time PCR System in novel gene expression research projects,” stated Alnoor Shivji, WaferGen’s chairman/CEO. “The work related to the development and use of the PulmoSmartChip is particularly exciting as it will seek to demonstrate the inherent power of the SmartChip system in creating and utilizing custom disease-specific gene expression assays. We anticipate that this cutting-edge functionality, which we believe is reproducible and applicable across all disease areas, will position the SmartChip system as the platform of choice for discovery and validation of biomarkers.”