Porvair Sciences reports, due to promising results, it has agreed with its collaborative partners to make additional investment in the CEAT project** which aims to dramatically improve the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.

In the initial stage of the CEAT (Cluster for Epigenomic and Antibody Drug Conjugate Therapeutics) project - Porvair Sciences supplied its proprietary Chromatrap® bead-free Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) technology to help University of Swansea researchers develop new epigenomic profiling approaches to enable advances in drug development and patient profiling.

So far the project has had success in developing bespoke chemo-resistant OC cell lines, optimised the Chromatrap® kits for 3D spheroid analysis along with biochemical analysis on AFM (Atomoic Force Microscopy). The expansion to the project will allow current microrheology assessment of disease phenotype spheroid culture models and high resolution binding kinetics to support selective targeting and drug mechanism of action.

Amy Johnson, Business and Technical Development Manager at Porvair Sciences said “Our further involvement in this exciting project will be now to launch the optimised ChIP kits for 3D spheroid analysis. These novel ChIP kits will enable assessment of disease phenotypes on spheroid culture models thereby providing a valuable insight to understanding drug target mechanisms and selectivity".

The CEAT  project is now valued at over £5m, principially led by the Swansea University Medical School, and in collaboration with 6 industrial partners, (Porvair Sciences Ltd, Bruker UK, Cytiva UK, Axis Bioservices and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The project is focused on developing  advanced drug technologies for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Key aims of the CEAT project are creation of novel epigenetic drugs using cross cutting technology approaches; development of techniques to identify patients that will benefit from targeted epigenetic and non-epigenetic drug treatments and generation of novel antibody drug conjugates (ADC's) effective against ovarian cancer.

For further information on the CEAT project please contact z.coombes@swansea.ac.uk.  

Chromatrap® is a brand of Porvair Sciences Ltd. with R&D and production laboratories based in the UK. Their extensive product range includes ChIP kits, DNA clean up kits and other innovative products for the life science market. Now cited in approaching thirty papers - Chromatrap® ChIP technology is rapidly becoming the method of choice for fast accurate ChIP assays.

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** Cancer Research UK statistics show ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer affecting females in the UK, with around 7,300 new cases in 2015. Advanced ovarian cancer has a five-year survival rate of only 5%. The incidence of ovarian cancer in younger women will continue to rise with a projected rate increase of 15% in the UK between 2014 and 2035 if no suitable interventions are developed and introduced into the National Health Service.