SCIENCE

TORONTO, CANADA -- MDS Proteomics, a leading proteomics-based drug discovery company, today announced the addition of its PepSea™ technology, an advanced tool for protein identification, to its bioinformatics technology platform. PepSea now provides researchers with the tools to identify expressed proteins directly in the human genome using mass spectrometric data. By implementing the technology on the company's high-speed supercomputing clusters, MDS Proteomics will have the ability to identify high-quality drug targets faster, thereby speeding the development of new medicines. Unraveling the mystery of protein activity is one of the largest challenges in scientific research and a key driver in the development of tools that enable the quick identification of high quality targets. Current proteomics technologies can only identify already known proteins or proteins predicted from genomic data. PepSea goes one step beyond, enabling the identification of unknown proteins with no prediction necessary. PepSea also can, in seconds, determine the location and identity of human genes that encode the proteins. Because of the error tolerance inherent in the PepSea algorithm, proteins can even be identified regardless of intervening sequences ("junk DNA" and introns), which make up the majority of human DNA. This scientific breakthrough was recently announced in the journal Proteomics by Dr. Matthias Mann and his academic group at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, together with researchers at MDS Proteomics in Odense, Denmark. "By allowing protein identification directly in raw human genome sequence, PepSea enables us to determine the identity and location of any human gene given an absolute minimum amount of protein," said Dr. Mann, chief proteomics officer of MDS Proteomics. Using just a fraction of the available power of its IBM multinode supercomputing cluster used for mining genomic sequence databases, MDS Proteomics is able to search the entire human genome in less than 5 seconds, fundamentally changing the rules of mass spectrometry. This is the first time this capability has been demonstrated. Based on the established application "PeptideSearch" developed by Mann, PepSea provides searches that are faster, error tolerant and of superior specificity. "Our integrated proteomics platform will lead the way to the discovery of many novel proteins and post-translational modifications, which are implicated in disease," said Frank Gleeson, president and chief executive officer of MDS Proteomics. "We expect this combination of technologies and expertise to broaden the scientific base from which, we and our pharmaceutical partners, will ultimately develop new therapeutic and diagnostic products." For further information visit www.mdsproteomics.com