BioVisioN AG Announces Publication on Correlation-Associated Peptide Networks (CAN) of Human Body Fluids in 'Proteomics'

HANNOVER, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 2005--BioVisioN AG announces the publication of an article on Correlation-Associated Peptide Networks by Jens Lamerz, member of the BioVisioN bioinformatics team in collaboration with the ETH Zurich and the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) in a recent issue of Proteomics (Proteomics 2005, 5, 2789-2798), a major peer-reviewed journal.

Each sample of a complex body fluid contains a snapshot of the respective peptidome. Profiling peptides and small proteins from either human body fluids or tissues by chromatography and subsequent mass spectrometry reveals several thousand individual peptide signals per sample. A potential diagnostic or bioactive peptide may not only display altered concentration levels in a given disease but should also be highly connected to other elements of the biological systems.

“The potential of this research is profound: These correlation-associated networks will become an important tool for a comprehensive analysis of peptidomes and proteomes and will facilitate discovery of bioactive, therapeutic and diagnostic peptides”

The authors describe and introduce a bioinformatics concept of Correlation-Associated Peptide Networks (CAN) developed by BioVisioNs' researchers. CAN supports the comprehensive statistical analysis of peptide profiling data and allows associating peptides, which are closely related in terms of peptide biochemistry. Peptides with statistical similarity of their concentrations are grouped in form of networks, and these networks are interpreted in terms of peptide chemistry and biology.

Hans-Dieter Zucht, PhD, Chief Information and Chief Technology Officer of BioVisioN AG, commented: "The potential of this research is profound: These correlation-associated networks will become an important tool for a comprehensive analysis of peptidomes and proteomes and will facilitate discovery of bioactive, therapeutic and diagnostic peptides".

BioVisioN has filed international patent applications covering this principle of using correlation analysis to obtain an overview of the contents of biological samples, e.g. patient samples, for the identification of biomarkers.

BioVisioN AG specialises in the identification of disease-relevant peptides and proteins using Peptidomics(R)-Technologies and Differential Peptide Display(R). The company was founded in 1997 as a spin-off of the Lower Saxony Institute of Peptide Research and today employs 45 people. Apart from pursuing its internal biomarker research programmes, BioVisioN provides access to its technology also in research collaborations and, in certain areas, as a service.