Waters partners with Singapore to find cancer markers

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By Laura Finaldi

Milford-based Waters Corp. on Monday announced a collaboration with the Bioprocessing Technology Institute in Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research, a partnership geared towards finding cancer markers and unraveling glycosylation pathways that could lead to new treatment approaches.

Waters and BTI will create a glycosphingolipid (GSL) head group database, containing glucose unit retention times and collision cross-section values. GSLs are highly complicated structures that are crucial for cell growth, interaction and signaling, according to Waters, and altering their structure could result in development of cancer or other diseases.

“Collaborating with Waters will enable BTI to apply its expertise in glycomics to develop analytical methods and a library of information on GSLs that doesn’t yet exist today. This will allow us to probe for potential clinical markers and to provide insights into disease progression and regression following therapeutic intervention,” said Dr. Susanto Woen, scientific lead and research scientist, BTI, said in a press release.

Waters brings to the table its scientific prowess as well as its SYNAPT G2-S High Definition Mass Spectrometry System, which can separate molecular ions by size, mass-to-charge ratio and shape. A relationship between Waters and BTI was first established in 2014.