Latest UKAS accreditation in molecular biology represents an important step on the road to individualised medicine

03 Mar 2006

Individualised patient diagnosis and treatment has taken a major step on the pathway from bench to clinic with the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) awarding its first accreditation for gene expression microarray and bioinfomatics analysis to Almac Diagnostics, a biotechnology company based in Northern Ireland.

Genes are the latest object of biological study in the development of targeted therapies. Microarrays can be used to study the response of genes to the different biological stimuli of diseases, including those attributable to gene mutations such as Alzheimers and cancer. It is hoped that in the future microarray technology will move from being a pure research tool to a clinical tool for routine diagnosis. This will take us much closer to the concept of individualised medicine, where each patient receives personalised treatment based on the microarray profiling of their genetic material.

There are, however, many social, ethical and commercial implications to this sort of genetic research. An assurance of the competence and capability of companies to produce data of consistently high quality and integrity is a prerequisite. Accreditation by UKAS demonstrates a high level of competence and capability and is important in the management of business risk.

Almac Diagnostics has achieved accreditation by UKAS to ISO/IEC 17025. It specialises in the application of microarray technology to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, utilising the Affymetrix GeneChip® platform. This is the most advanced technology of its kind in the world and an extremely effective and efficient tool in the study of cellular genetics. Unlike traditional methods of genetic research where only a few genes could be studied at any given time, the thousands of sampling probes (known as expression arrays) enable researchers to study tens of thousands of genes in a single experiment. Using the technology to compare, for instance, tumours with biopsies from healthy tissue enables gene relationships to be established which has implications for the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancer.

For further information on UKAS and the role of accreditation go to www.ukas.com, contact: 020 8917 8400 or email info@ukas.com

Notes for Editors

1. Standards are best-practice specifications that organisations use in order to achieve efficiency, quality and interoperability.
2. UKAS's status as the sole national accreditation body recognised by the UK Government is formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and UKAS. UKAS accreditation involves assessment and verification (against international standards) of certification, inspection, testing and calibration activities.
3. Almac Diagnostics develops, markets and supplies, leading edge genomic expression services and products that will radically improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Almac Diagnostics has two divisions. The Genomic Services business provides an all inclusive gene expression and bioinfomatic service to academia, biotech and pharmaceutical companies. These services include analysis on our unique disease specific cancer arrays, which provide the ability to detect the maximum information in a given cancer type. The R&D Division develops, using the proprietary disease specific arrays, new signatures for improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, that will change the way cancers are managed in the future.
4. Almac Diagnostics is a division of Almac Sciences, an organisation providing services from diagnostics, research and development, API synthesis, formulation development, all phases of clinical trials to the manufacture of finished product. For more information about Almac Diagnostics, please visit the company's website at www.almac-diagnostics.com