Advanced & Next-Gen Proteomics - Director of Biomarker Research, Medium Pharma

A director of biomarker discovery at a mid-size pharma company speaks about their next-generation proteomics use. They work primarily in rare neurological diseases and use NGP for metabolomics and ultra-sensitive ELISA, in addition to large panels for biomarker discovery. This stakeholder views NGP as a set of technologies which expand upon legacy proteomics tools, and which offer higher throughput, plex, and the assessment of proteins which are rare and / or may not yet have available antibodies. Platforms with which they are most familiar include Meso Scale, ProteinSimple’s Ella, Olink, Luminex, and Quanterix, and their satisfaction is highest with Olink, Luminex, and Meso Scale with some reservations. Their work is currently mass spectrometry-focused, and they believe analysis of protein activity and post-translational modifications will serve as key advancements in the NGP space in the coming years. This stakeholder is price sensitive, and considers assay cost a major selection factor when choosing new assays. Other important factors include sensitivity, turnaround time and availability of assays covering proteins of interest. A major pain point cited in this interview is the lack of proteomic assay reproducibility between platforms, CROs, and reference labs.

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