Advancing the epidemiologic research programmes for the US National Cancer Institute's Colon Cancer Family Registry
Transgenomic announced that the application of its Wave System for DNA analysis will be discussed at the Fourth Joint Meeting of the Leeds Castle Polyposis Group and the International Collaborative Group on Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colorectal Cancer.
This meeting is jointly sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and is being held in Cleveland USA on 2-6 September 2003.
In a presentation to be given at this meeting, Robert Haile, professor and director of the Genetic Epidemiology Program, Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, will discuss use of the Wave System for detection of genetic mutations in individuals with hereditary forms of colorectal cancer.
Haile is a principal investigator affiliated with the Colon Cancer Family Registry (the Colon CFR), a National Cancer Institute-funded international consortium of six research institutions.
These centers and their collaborators are engaged in a cooperative effort to collect pedigree information, epidemiological data and related biological specimens from patients with a family history of colon cancer in order to provide a resource for epidemiologic and translational research.
According to Haile, "An important goal of the Colon CFR is to test for mutations in the MSH2 and MLH1 genes in over 2,000 subjects with colorectal cancer".
"Most centers in the Colon CFR decided to use DHPLC and the WAVE System from Transgenomic because this technology provides us with a cost-effective, easy-to-use, robust and highly sensitive technique for mutation detection." He continued, "In addition, we like the fact that the Wave System may be used for other research projects that we plan, including DNA or RNA sizing and quantitation, post-PCR fragment purification and collection, and genotyping using primer extension methods or microsatellite DNA analysis." Collin D'Silva, Transgenomic's CEO, stated, "Several Wave Systems have been recently purchased by CFR centers in addition to existing systems at several of these sites".
"We believe our Wave technology is ideal for the analysis of genes such as MSH2 and MLH1, which are characterized by hundreds of different mutations in populations that have been studied to date".
"The Wave System offers a time- and cost-effective means to scan genes of interest for almost all relevant mutations, eliminating the need to design and optimize specific probe- or primer-based tests for each individual mutation." In addition to these recent CFR center installations, the Wave System is in use for colorectal cancer studies at several clinical labs around the world.
