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Our Research Background at The Babraham Institute
CPA engages actively in basic research projects both inhouse and with academic collaborators, to develop and apply protein arrays. It grew out of Mike Taussig’s research group at The Babraham Institute (Cambridge, UK) where the concept of creating protein arrays from DNA arrays by cell free protein synthesis (DAPA technology) was developed. This was progressed as a research tool but has not been taken forward commercially by CPA.
Horizon 2020
“Standardisation and Improvement of generic pre-analytical tools and
procedures for in vitro diagnostics in personalised medicine” (www.spidia.eu)
The CPA team has a long history of participation in EU framework projects. CPA is a partner in the current Horizon 2020 project SPIDIA4P, coordinated by QIAGEN GmbH, which is engaged in initiating, developing and implementing a comprehensive portfolio of pan-European pre-analytical CEN/TS and ISO/IS documents as well as External Quality Assessment schemes (EQAs), addressing the important pre-analytical workflows applied to personalised medicine.
FP7 EU Framework Project
“Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure - Large Prospective Cohorts”
Mike Taussig’s group at the Babraham Institute was a founding partner in the EU Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure, BBMRI (now a European Research Infrastructure Consortium or ERIC, www.bbmri-eric.eu), and CPA was a partner in its further development project BBMRI – Large Prospective Cohorts (2013-2017). In the latter, HuProt proteome arrays were used to analyse autoantibodies in patient sera from the Estonian biobank as potential biomarkers for risk of early mortality and from Uppsala University hospital for discovery of targets in Primary Sjögren’s Syndrome. The consortium report can be viewed here (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/313010).
EU FP7 Framework project
“Protein Binders for Characterisation of Human Proteome Function: Generation, Validation, Application”
Mike Taussig had the role of coordinator in the major EU project AFFINOMICS, funded with 11M euros under FP7, with 20 leading European partners in the antibody field (2010-2015). As the title indicates, the aim of AFFINOMICS was to explore the production of antibodies and novel binding entities against the entire human proteome. View the full final report of the project.
FP6 EU Framework Project
“A European Resource of Affinity Reagents for Analysis of the Human Proteome.”
This was a forerunner of Affinomics and planned the production of binding reagents for analysis of the human proteome. It ran from 2006 to 2010 and was coordinated by Mike Taussig while at the Babraham Institute, pre-dating CPA, with 28 partners from 13 countries and was funded under the FP6 Research Infrastructures programme. The project was highly influential in highlighting the methodologies required for large scale antibody production and a template for the future development of antibody resources was laid our in a Nature Methods commentary article: Taussig MJ, Stoevesandt O, Borrebaeck CA, Bradbury AR, et al. ProteomeBinders: Planning a European Resource of Affinity Reagents for Analysis of the Human Proteome. Nature Methods 2007;4:13-7.
