Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (“PBI”) is a leader in the development and sale of innovative, broadly enabling, pressure-based instruments and related consumables for the worldwide life sciences and other industries. The Company has announced the publication two scientific journal articles, led by independent teams of scientists in China and Australia, reporting excellent results with PBI’s Pressure Cycling Technology (“PCT”) platform in processing preserved formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (“FFPE”) and fresh frozen biopsy tissue samples for discovery and elucidation of cancer biomarkers and potentially for use in clinical diagnostics based upon these markers.
Pressure BioSciences, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is based in South Easton, Massachusetts, USA. Their products are based on the unique properties of both constant (i.e., static) and alternating (i.e., pressure cycling technology, or PCT) hydrostatic pressure. PCT is a patented enabling technology platform that uses alternating cycles of hydrostatic pressure between ambient and ultra-high levels to safely and reproducibly control bio-molecular interactions (e.g., cell lysis, biomolecule extraction). The company’s primary focus is in the development of PCT-based products for biomarker and target discovery, drug design and development, biotherapeutics characterization and quality control, soil & plant biology, forensics, and counter-bioterror applications.
The Chinese team from Westlake University (Hangzhou, China) purchased their first two PCT platforms in 2017 and subsequently purchased four additional PCT systems. The Australian Proteome of Human Cancer (“ProCan”) team bought their first PCT system in 2016 and have subsequently added five more PCT platforms.
“We developed the PCT-SWATH/DIA method of coupling pressure cycling technology for sample preparation with a high throughput mass spectrometry workflow, to analyze FFPE tissue proteomes. We showed that our workflow is a robust and reproducible proteomic method to analyze FFPE tissues from both bulk tissue and tiny biopsy samples as well as sectioned tissue slices.”
“We believe that the vast reservoirs of historical FFPE tissue samples accumulated in biobanks worldwide offer enormous potential using our methods for biomarker discovery, by leveraging the practicality and superiority of PBI’s PCT sample preparation platform for maximizing the diversity and abundance of results from FFPE samples (over even fresh frozen samples), followed by mass spectrometry analysis in the PCT-SWATH/DIA workflow.” – Professor Tiannan Guo, Laboratory Director, Westlake University, China
“The key to clinical application of tissue-based proteomics is to adapt to the practical requirements of clinical workflow. Our results from FFPE tissues following PCT sample preparation are consistent with other reports showing that high quality data can be generated and that the scale and scope of quantifiable proteins is comparable to that obtained from fresh frozen tissues.”
“After samples are collected, tissue lysis and digestion protocols must be rapid, efficient, reproducible and broadly applicable to tissues of different kinds and from different source laboratories. In addition, the methodology should be adaptable for integration of robotics to facilitate high throughput where possible. ProCan has instituted the use of pressure cycling technology (PBI Barocyclers) to achieve consistent and superior lysis and digestion of tissue samples.” – Professor Phil Robinson, Co-Director, ProCan, Australia
“It is estimated (Nature volume 448, pages 959–962, 23 August 2007) that well over one billion archival FFPE tissue samples exist in pathology and other laboratories worldwide. We believe there are millions of new FFPE tissue samples processed and stored each year. These samples offer the promise of unveiling invaluable information that can lead to the development of new treatments, cures, and preventive measures for cancer and many other diseases. However, up to now, it has been very difficult to extract this information from biomolecules in FFPE samples.” – Mr. Richard T. Schumacher, President and CEO, Pressure BioSciences
“We believe that our PCT platform is establishing itself as the method of choice for the superior extraction of potential biomarkers and their presentation for the effective proteomic analyses that will propel the growth of this huge market. We expect this exciting, now proven application of our PCT Platform for protein biomarker discovery in fresh frozen and FFPE biopsy samples to manifest itself in increased instrument sales starting in the second half of 2019.” – Ms. Roxana McCloskey, Director of Marketing and Sales, Pressure BioSciences
Sources
- https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/09/10/1913564/0/en/Pressure-BioSciences-PCT-Platform-Identified-as-Pivotal-for-Cancer-Biomarker-Discovery-and-for-Potential-Clinical-Diagnostics.html
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pressure-biosciences#section-overview
- https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1878-0261.12570
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pmic.201900109
