Gene Expression

TMD Gene Expression Services

APPLICATIONS

• Correlating gene expression patterns with patient response
• Screening a large number of patient samples against a fixed set of targets
• Validating results generated from gene expression microarrays (e.g. Affymetrix, Agilent, etc)
• Compatible with needle biopsies, blood and formalin fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) archival tissue samples
• Interested in understanding the molecular profile of the patients who are responding to your therapeutic?
• Concerned about limited amount of genetic material for analysis?

TMD’s gene expression services allow you to uncover the molecular signature of a responding (or resistant) patient. Obtaining a set of genes that correlate with a favorable treatment response, or that predicts for resistance, allows you to refine a biomarker profile for your therapeutic.

For clinical trials, TMD will collaborate with you to develop a low-density customized array of genes on a biomarker service microfluidic card. The standardized format of this platform with a fixed set of genes ensures rigorous standardization and reproducibility that is required for the analysis of clinical specimens.

TMD has optimized a procedure for maximum recovery of RNA from FFPE clinical specimens. The TMD process involves whole section extraction if a specimen is comprised of >80% tumor by H&E or else an enrichment step for samples with <80% tumor. Even needle biopsies, which may contain miniscule amounts of tumor cells, are commonly collected in clinical trials and can be used with the low density microfluidic cards.

For pre-clinical projects or biomarker services, TMD can perform growth and proliferation assays on cell lines treated with your compound by itself or in combination. Following gene expression microarray and signaling network analyses, TMD identifies relevant gene signatures that can then be performed as individual quantitative Real-Time PCR experiments or in a low-density microfluidic format as described above.

Examples of Gene Expression Assays available from TMD

• E-cadherin
  
• ZEB1
  
• HIF1-alpha
  
• p21
  
• ErbB3

Please contact us at biomarkers@tmdlab.com to customize a low-density microfluidic card or to obtain more information about our RT PCR assays.