Millipore is expanding its multiplex portfolio for protein research in pharmaceutical companies, academic and clinical research institutions. The company is looking for opportunities to collaborate with Indian scientists and guide them in decisions of using the right technology for their research needs.

The Multiple Analyte Profiling (MAP) which has led to the development of Luminex technology is based on polystyrene or magnetic beads. Each bead set can be used to conjugate an antibody to the specific analyte of interest. Millipore has partnered with Luminex where it uses the Luminex xMAP technology to develop, manufacture and commercialize multiplex immunoassay kits for a broad range of protein biomarkers involved in various diseases or research areas. Luminex xMAP technology is for multiplex measurement of proteins, nucleic acids and ligand-receptor type interactions.

To expand its presence in MAP, the company is keen to collaborate with scientists around the world including India for developing multiplexing assays of specific interest in the country. "We routinely work/collaborate with scientists around the world to develop new multiplexing assays that provide sustainable advantage to our customers," Dr Jehangir Mistry, director, R&D, Bioscience, Millipore Corporation told Pharmabiz in an email interaction.

Millipore not only provides the multiplex immunoassay kits to the customers who already have the Luminex reader to run the kit in-house. But it also offers to run samples and provide results for a fee to those customers who either may not have the Luminex reader or are not familiar with the technology or simply may not want to invest in resources to run the kit in house.
"We offer the complete workflow solution to our customers through the broadest menu of panels and analytes useful for studying metabolism, inflammation & immunology, cardiovascular & bone disorders, neuroscience, toxicity and cell signalling," he added.

The biomarker immunoassays are much-sought after in life science for the measurement of biologically important proteins that are either involved in the etiology or could serve as markers of various diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, infectious diseases, toxicity and others.

All major pharmaceutical companies as well as many academic and clinical research centres are now in active pursuit of identifying proteins that would serve as biomarkers for the purpose of either prognosis or diagnosis or monitoring drug efficacy or patient stratification or risk assessment. These proteins either circulate in the blood or are present inside the cell.

Luminex xMAP technology is versatile, flexible and affordable compared to existing multiplex technologies such as planar arrays. The Luminex beads are robust, easy to handle and are easy to couple with antibodies.

The major benefits of Luminex xMAP multiplexing are access to information at a faster pace, conservation of biological samples and reduced cost of analysis due to the reduction in labour, time and the cost of reagents, said Dr Mistry.