Agilent Technologies reports progress on human proteome mapping

Agilent Technologies has reported positive progress on its ongoing collaborative project to map the complete human proteome via mass spectrometry.

The science firm, in association with the Institute for Systems Biology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, has completed the first phase of the project this week and is now entering the second stage.

Gold-standard reference mass spectra for each of the 20,300 genes annotated as protein-encoding in the human genome have been generated as part of the project, which was announced in October 2009.

Once completed, it is hoped the resulting data will aid biomarker discovery and validation initiatives, making the development of personalised medicines and diagnostic tests easier in future.

Gustavo Salem, vice-president and general manager of Agilent's biological systems division, said: "We've devoted a great deal of effort to developing highly sensitive and selective proteomics tools for research and we're delighted to see them being used to such great effect for this vital work."

Last month, the company launched its new SureSelect Human All Exon v2 Target Enrichment kit, an assay which makes it easier for scientists to conduct genome sequencing.