BlueGnome has announced that it has completed the initial validation of a microarray designed to accelerate investigations into the cytogenetics of common haematological malignancies.
Routine investigations of leukaemias and lymphomas currently use a combination of G-band karyotyping and fluorescent in-situ hybridisation (FISH) to characterise the percentage of malignant cells in the sample and the nature of any associated chromosomal abnormalities.
These techniques require the cells to be cultured, which introduces the possibility that differential growth rates between malignant and healthy cells will result in presence of certain malignancies being underestimated or in some cases missed altogether.
BlueGnome said its haematology array uses arrayCGH approaches to overcome these limitations and utilises its Focus format - a robust arrayCGH microarray that combines on-chip controls, replication strategies and genome wide screening for larger structural abnormalities, while avoiding all known copy number polymorphisms (CNPs).
Validation of the haematology array is being completed in collaboration with nine international cytogenetics laboratories.
Dr Nick Haan, chief executive at BlueGnome, said: 'Routine haematology investigations take microarray technology in a new direction where sensitivity is critical.
'The Focus format has enabled us to detect clinically relevant imbalances in as little as 10 per cent of the sample cell population.
'In some cases these imbalances were absent in the cell cultures and so would not have been reported by existing techniques.' Eigil Kjeldsen, head of cancer cytogenetics at Aarhus University Hospital, added: 'The challenges associated with culturing certain cell types, for example childhood ALL, are well recognised.
'We expect to see increasing use of microarrays in our laboratory in order to provide the maximum amount of information as early as possible in the investigation.' The BlueGnome Focus haematology array, version 1.0, investigates copy number imbalance in 50 regions of known clinical significance and larger scale alterations in the backbone.
The haematology array will be available for research use only from September 2008 onwards.
Version 2.0, with additional disease coverage, will be available in the New Year.
