Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and SomaLogic announce agreement to deploy the automated version of SOMAscan assay

June, 2015

WCMC-Q and SomaLogic have announced that the automated version of the SOMAscan assay, which has been previously available only at SomaLogic’s headquarters in Boulder, CO, has been installed at the WCMC-Q campus in Doha.

In addition to being the first automated site outside of SomaLogic, this is also the first placement of the SOMAscan assay outside of North America.

“The SOMAscan assay is a key component of the cutting edge biomedical technology provided in Qatar by Weill Cornell Medical College,” said Dr. Johannes Graumann, assistant professor of biochemistry and director of the Proteomics Core at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. “It will help us achieve our mission to support and foster cross-institutional collaboration, improve our understanding of disease mechanisms, identify markers of disease and progression, and to ultimately improve patient care.” Dr. Shahrad Taheri, professor of medicine and director of the Clinical Research Core at WCMC-Q, added: “SomaLogic’s technology can potentially allow more personalized assessment of disease risk and, therefore, better preventive measures. Furthermore, once disease occurs it may be possible to reverse or delay it through greater understanding of treatment selection and responses to treatment measures. This will provide a revolutionary advance to modern medical care.”

Compared to other current proteomic technologies, SomaLogic provides researchers with unprecedented power for protein biomarker discovery, diagnostics development, and pharmaceutical discovery and development. SOMAmer® (Slow Off-rate Modified Aptamer) reagents, which are at the center of SomaLogic’s proteomics platform, are a new class of superior protein-binding reagents that combine the best properties of both monoclonal antibodies and traditional aptamers. The SOMAscan assay, which incorporates 1129 different SOMAmer reagents, can efficiently, accurately, and rapidly measure proteins across a wide range of concentrations in small volumes of multiple biological sample types. The automated version of the SOMAscan assay being installed at WCMC-Q can be configured to analyze 100 or more biological samples a day.

“We are delighted that Weill Cornell Medical College is providing the SOMAscan assay to its researchers by making it available at their state-of-the-art Qatar location, and under the leadership of such capable scientists” said Byron Hewett, chief executive officer of SomaLogic. “We anticipate many significant new insights into disease diagnosis and treatment to come from their work.”