SomaLogic, Inc., a privately held biomarker discovery and clinical diagnostics company, and NEC Corporation have entered into an agreement that gives NEC exclusive marketing rights in Japan for SomaLogic’s SOMAscan assay, which is built on SomaLogic’s proprietary SOMAmer technology.

Under the agreement, NEC will offer access to the SOMAscan assay to biopharmaceutical companies, food companies, and academic research centers for their research in Japan.

SomaLogic's breakthrough SOMAscan proteomic assay efficiently, accurately, and rapidly identifies and quantifies 1,129 proteins across a wide range of concentrations in small volumes of multiple biological sample types. Compared to other current proteomic technologies, SomaLogic's breadth and depth of coverage offers unprecedented power for protein biomarker discovery, diagnostics development, and pharmaceutical discovery and development.

This new collaboration expands on a 2010 agreement between NEC and SomaLogic to explore applications of SomaLogic’s technology in the life sciences and healthcare markets. Under the previous agreement, NEC developed the SomaSuite software tool, which facilitates the interpretation of the large data sets produced by the SOMAscan assay. The SomaSuite software will also be provided to Japanese SOMAscan assay clients under the new agreement.

Both of these agreements with SomaLogic reflect NEC’s growing emphasis on applying its deep computational expertise to become a world leader in providing novel healthcare solutions.