" class="no-js "lang="en-US"> SomaLogic to Provide 210 Million Protein Measurements to EPIC Researchers to Better Understand and Predict Cancer Development - Medtech Alert
Friday, March 29, 2024

SomaLogic to Provide 210 Million Protein Measurements to EPIC Researchers to Better Understand and Predict Cancer Development

SomaLogic (NASDAQ: SLGC), a leader in data-driven proteomics technology, today announced that the company will begin assaying samples from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study beginning in the first quarter of 2022. SomaLogic will use its industry leading SomaScan® Assay to analyze 210 million protein measurements from 30,000 samples spanning 15 years of clinical interactions to help researchers understand and predict cancer development. The SomaScan® Platform is the first large-scale, multi-disease proteomics study to be conducted in the EPIC cohort.

Substantial progress has been made over the past two decades in clinical diagnosis and survival for a range of cancers, but population screening programs have not kept pace with these advances. The collaboration between SomaLogic and EPIC aims to develop potentially predictive protein markers in cancer and other diseases. This may lead to fundamental discoveries enhancing clinical understanding of cancer and its treatment, or to the development of screening and diagnostic tools to improve outcomes.

Through its collaboration with EPIC, SomaLogic and Imperial College London will create a Centre for Excellence in Proteomics of Cancer, which will sit within the School of Public Health and continue research into areas of chronic disease supported by proteomic analysis.

“Proteomics is a powerful tool in predicting cancer because of its strengths in detecting immune surveillance and the body’s response to precancer physiology and environmental exposures,” said SomaLogic Chief Medical Officer Stephen A. Williams. “EPIC’s rich data set will allow us the chance to explore new ways of predicting cancer.”

Jointly coordinated by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and Imperial College London, the EPIC study is one of the largest cohort studies in the world with 521,000 participants recruited from 10 European countries and follow-up data covering 20 years. The study is focused on the impact of diet, nutritional status, and lifestyle and environmental factors on the incidence of various cancers and other chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and neurodegenerative diseases. Over the EPIC study period of 1992 to 2015, more than 67,000 participants were diagnosed with cancer. Updating the follow-up data is on-going.

“The study of proteins is the missing ‘-omic’ in the study of cancer,” said EPIC Coordinator and Principal Investigator Elio Riboli, a Professor of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health. “Having proteomic measurements in our data gives us the strongest case for the integration of genetics, behavior and environment in improving the prediction of disease.”

SomaLogic is currently working with researchers from 22 large databanks from around the world to provide proteomics data to support the study of human health. SomaLogic will use the SomaScan data from the EPIC study, as well as information from clinical visits and health histories, to develop tools to improve cancer care.

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