"Sigma's experience in seeing life science technologies taken to market meant they possessed an experience and vision which accurately understood the market demands for research tools that could be based on the King's College's technology," says the spokesman. "This experience also brought with it an understanding of what user format of research tool could be constructed using the King's College's technology as its foundation. Their experience in development of such user-formats ensured they would establish efficiently how to ensure performance characteristics for the tool would be achieved to the level required by users, and importantly, the efficient development steps that would be required to evolve the King's College's technology into a high- performance format that was still amenable to large-scale production and supply in a cost-effective manner."

 

Ultimately, says Dr. Joop Gaken, a lead researcher in King's College's role in the project, the new test has serious implications for oncology research.

 

"The role of miRNAs in cancer is well established, and several miRNAs clearly function as either oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, although the target genes are unknown in the majority of cases," Gaken says.