The Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Bio-Rad Laboratories, and Non-linear Dynamics are coordinating the proteomics community’s efforts to develop standards and protocols that will ensure reproducibility in 2-D gel electrophoresis applications.
The “Fixing Proteomics Campaign” was announced at the 6th HUPO Annual World Congress in Korea in October 2007. The campaign's goal is to restore credibility to the field by pushing for greater reproducibility of 2-D gel experiments.
According to campaign organizers, the proteomics community needs assurance of their 2-D gels results for proteomics and biomarker discovery research.
At the 7th HUPO Annual World Congress in Amsterdam last year, Dr. Hans Voshol, senior scientist of protein sciences at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, presented phase I 2-D gel reproducibility results. He showed protein expression analysis based on 2-D page was reproducible across five independent laboratories using three different isoelectric focusing instruments.
Fifteen labs from seven different countries have volunteered to participate in the next phase of the project. The goal of this next phase is to standardize a 2-D gel protocol using a common sample, to demonstrate continuous lab reproducibility regardless of platform.
The final goal of the campaign is to define a standard method sample and validating the performance and reproducibility of the 2-D process.
A secondary goal is to encourage global education of the protocols to ensure inter-lab reproducibility with 2-D results. To achieve this secondary goal, Bio-Rad plans to conduct wet lab clinics for its customers to point out potential pitfalls and recommend solutions for reproducible results.
The labs have completed their 2-D gel experiments on their own platforms using Bio-Rad’s or their own reagents and a common reference, a Hela cell sample supplied by CILBiotech, and Nonlinear Dynamics will perform the analysis of the participants’ 2-D gels.
The campaign's participants believe that success will be achieved if the 2-D gel images of the 15 laboratories match the standard image. The results of this phase will be announced at the 8th HUPO Annual World Congress in Toronto on September 26-30, 2009. The results will be submitted for publication a peer-reviewed journal after the conference.
