MAQC Scientists To Meet at SAS

Scientists studying the prospective use of DNA technology to expedite diagnoses and customize medical treatment will meet at SAS world headquarters in May. As many as 100 researchers are expected to attend the meeting of the MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) Consortium May 24 and 25.

The consortium, which includes three SAS researchers, is involved in a sweeping study of DNA microarray technology sponsored by the US Food and Drug Administration. Microarrays let researchers see how genetic properties are "expressed" –- turned on or off by environmental stimuli or a cell’s changing needs. They let scientists observe the expressions of thousands of genes at once. Already, researchers are using these lab tools extensively to discover how various diseases develop and progress.

The first phase of the MAQC study showed that this relatively new technology yields results that are sufficiently reliable and reproducible to warrant a second phase of critical investigation. That critical finding gives the FDA the validation it needs to consider whether microarrays should be added to the arsenal of diagnostic and drug-testing procedures it sanctions. One new breast cancer diagnostic technology derived from microarrays, MammaPrint, recently received FDA approval.

Now, in phase two, MAQC researchers expect to spend up to two years determining whether various genomic "biomarkers" can reliably predict how a disease is likely to progress in a certain patient, and which drug should produce the safest and best treatment result in that patient. Four working groups in phase two are focusing on the following areas: clinical prediction, toxicogenomics, titration analysis and regulatory biostatistics.

Russ Wolfinger, SAS Director of Scientific Discovery and Genomics, and two SAS colleagues, Tzu-Ming Chu and Wenjun Bao, are active participants in the phase two working groups and will serve as local hosts for the May meeting. "We’re really looking forward to seeing everyone again and offering our corporate campus as a venue," said Wolfinger. "While we spend many hours on conference calls, there is no substitute for periodic face-to-face meetings to solidify and accelerate progress."

JMP® Genomics technology supports cutting-edge science

In addition to the SAS participants, the MAQC study has another SAS link -– researchers are using JMP Genomics software from SAS to analyze data and show results in graphical format. In phase one, JMP Genomics was used to analyze data from more than 1,300 microarrays tested at 18 labs using instrumentation from all major array manufacturers.

"Large-scale, consortium-driven data sets like these are becoming more and more prominent," Wolfinger said, "and our SAS technologies are up to the ever-increasing challenges." JMP Genomics offers a user-friendly menu interface to customized and powerful SAS® programs for the analysis of genomic data sets, using JMP visualization capabilities to translate results into dynamic, interactive graphical displays at the end.

The quest to personalize the treatment of cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses is a huge undertaking. And some of the most important insights into the causes and cures of these diseases can be found within large genomics data sets that describe the inner workings of microscopic cells.

"The hope is that we will be able to battle diseases more effectively by understanding their causes at a molecular level," Wolfinger explained. "High-throughput genotyping, microarray and proteomics data will be a very important resource for researchers seeking this ultimate goal, and the MAQC effort is an impressive step towards its successful realization."

 

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