Cancer research agreement

An agreement between Swiss-based biotech company Roche and UCLA in the US will provide cancer researchers with the technology to drive research capabilities and further the understanding for complex disease, it has been announced.

"Discoveries made by UCLA scientists while working with the technologies will help provide Roche scientists with insight on academic research and can be used to refine Roche operations or develop new applications for the equipment," said Dr Michael Teitell, a researcher who helped design the collaboration.

Under the agreement, the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center will be provided with valuable technology directly from Roche's research and development pipeline. This will include the company’s latest generation microarray systems, high-throughput screening instruments, genetic expression profilers and exome sequencing technologies.

The company will also provide advanced reagent technologies and bioinformatics support to be used in the pursuit of discovering new predictive biomarkers, which will be used as targets for future therapeutics and diagnostics for a host of diseases.

"Our focus is to provide the scientific community with cutting-edge genomic tools that can rapidly advance their research,” said Robert Yates, Head of Roche Applied Science. “This collaboration is an innovative approach to working closely with leading institutes, such as UCLA, at an early stage of research in the pursuit of new predictive biomarkers. By working together at an early stage, we can optimize the technologies and provide the necessary support to improve detection and analysis, and ultimately, the success rate of biomarker discovery."

For more information on the company visit www.roche.com