Agilent Technologies Inc. Collaborating With Weill Cornell Medical College To Advance Research In ALS

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced it is collaborating with Dr. Steven Gross, a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York, N.Y., to advance research in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Agilent will provide the latest mass spectrometry technology to support his research, working toward an understanding of how the most common form of this disease develops in the body.

“We’re very excited to ally ourselves with Agilent to extend our planned attack on the sporadic form of ALS”

The Agilent 6230B LC TOF and 6550A LC Q-TOF mass spectrometers will be housed in the laboratory of Dr. Gross, an internationally recognized expert in the use of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. His expertise is in pharmacology and cell biology, particularly in relation to the role of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule.

Dr. Gross, along with Dr. Qiuying Chen, an assistant research professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell, and Ben Schwartz, a student in the pharmacology doctoral program at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, is studying the most common form of ALS. ALS is a deadly and progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, and is also characterized by impaired metabolic control.

Sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (sALS) accounts for about 90 percent of all ALS cases and has no obvious genetic driver. Dr. Gross and his collaborators—Dr. Giovanni Manfredi, a professor of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell, and Dr. Lorenz Studer, director of Sloan Kettering Institute’s Center for Stem Cell Biology—are investigating the molecular underpinnings of this form of ALS. The Agilent tools will empower the investigators to apply a multi-disciplinary-based approach to understanding the roots of this disease. Accurate-mass mass spectrometry will enable these researchers to test the hypothesis that fibroblasts express systemic metabolic markers that inform ALS.

“Translational research using a combination of biological disciplines—genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics—is an emerging trend in academia,” said Steven Fischer, market director for life science research in academia and government at Agilent. “Most researchers, however, do not know how to perform multi-omic analysis, and successful examples are needed. Agilent is working with the Gross lab at Weill Cornell to advance the multi-omics-based approach to disease research, using sporadic ALS to demonstrate the power of this method.”

“We’re very excited to ally ourselves with Agilent to extend our planned attack on the sporadic form of ALS,” Dr. Gross said. “Our newly established scientific collaboration offers a rare opportunity to obtain and integrate multi-omics data, with the potential to yield an unprecedented understanding of the molecular basis for this devastating disease. We anticipate that this scientific work with Agilent will continue into the future as we apply multi-omics approaches to other poorly understood diseases with unmet clinical needs.”

Agilent is a leader in mass spectrometry and offers comprehensive solutions across all the major omics disciplines. Agilent solutions cover sample preparation, instrumentation and software to process and analyze research data in order to gain biological insights into complex diseases.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A), a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets, is the premier laboratory partner for a better world. Agilent works with customers in more than 100 countries, providing instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. The company generated revenues of $4.0 billion in fiscal 2014 and employs about 12,000 people worldwide. Agilent marks its 50^th anniversary in analytical instrumentation this year. Information about Agilent is available at www.agilent.com.

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