Bluegnome has announced the first shipments of Cytochip CCMC, a microarray platform that combines Bluefuse software with Cancer Cytogenomics Microarray Consortium (CCMC) arrays.
Microarrays are widely used to screen human DNA for abnormalities associated with developmental delay, dysmorphia and other genetic diseases where the abnormality is carried by every cell in the body.
Their use for cancer research is however more challenging as the genetic changes associated with cancer are different in every cell and may vary depending upon the type of cancer, its stage of development, the age and genotype of the patient and exactly which cells are used in the investigation.
To address these challenges, the CCMC has developed a standard microarray design in order to improve the comparability of results obtained from different laboratories.
The CCMC states it is aiming to develop a platform-neutral standard cancer microarray design that will be used to create a public cancer microarray database, to support cancer genome research and facilitate the application of microarray technology in cancer diagnosis in CLIA-certified laboratories.
Bluefuse is used by microarray laboratories in more than 30 countries because it generates results automatically and stores them in a single database, together with the experimental conditions and the latest information on how abnormalities might be linked to the underlying disease.
