Development award
Cellzome, which has operations in Cambridge, UK and Heidelberg, Germany, has been awarded an Industry Collaboration grant by the UK Medical Research Council to work with Christopher Buckley and Karim Raza in the Department of Rheumatology and Medical Research Council Centre for Immune Regulation, at Birmingham University, to profile the expression of kinases in the early stages of inflammatory arthritis.
The project brings together three novel elements, a unique cohort of well characterised patients with very early inflammatory arthritis, refined ultrasound-guided technology for taking biopsies from joints and Cellzome’s Kinobeads kinase expression profiling technology. This combination will make it possible to profile the expression levels and activation states of kinases isolated directly from patient cells.
David Simmons, Cellzome’s Chief Scientific Officer said the award will enable the collaborators to directly study the signatures of the kinases that are expressed in the very early stages of arthritis. “We hope this will point to new targets for early therapeutic intervention.”
The Industry Collaboration Award scheme was established by the UK Medical Research Council and MRC Technology to encourage collaborative research between MRC-funded researchers and industry.
Earlier this year, Cellzome was awarded a German grant as part of the Integrated German Genome Network. The grant provides funding for three years to study the systems biology of genetic diseases with Hans Lehrach at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics.
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