Collaboration includes 30 researchers working on over 10 forms of cancer.

Affymetrix launched the Collaborations in Cancer Research Program, an alliance between Affymetrix and up to 30 European cancer researchers spanning more than 10 cancer types.


Affymetrix reports that it will partially fund selected research projects that demonstrate clinical utility. In addition to helping participants obtain tools and training, the company will also provide forums where investigators can exchange knowledge and share best practices.


“The program provides an opportunity to learn from other people’s experience and drive our own research forward,” remarks Ashok Venkitaraman, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the department of oncology andThe Medical Research Council cancer cell unit at the University of Cambridge. “The latest Affymetrix tiling arrays cover the entire genome at high enough resolution to enable new insights from ChIP and expression profiling experiments. The company also has a lot of in-house experience with data analysis and data collection, which is a big advantage for labs such as mine.”


Participants in the Collaborations in Cancer Research Program were selected on the basis of past contributions to their respective fields and the potential to make significant advancements in their current research, according to Affymetrix. Researchers come from various universities and institutes, such as London Research Institute, VTT Technical Research Centre, German Cancer Research Center, National Institute of Tumors IRCSS Foundation (Italy), Aarhus University Hospital (Denmark), Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, and Erasmus University (The Neatherlands).


Affymetrix says that the results of the participating studies will be reported at a company-sponsored European cancer meeting in the second half of 2007. Later this year, it plans to expand the Collaborations in Cancer Research Program to groups in North America and Japan.

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