The £3.4m Glasgow Molecular Pathology Node (GMP) was established to transform the management of cancer and chronic disease by accelerating biomedical research, high quality healthcare provision and economic growth.
Central to this vision is the development of a platform that provides integrated access to biorepository, pathology, molecular pathology/ diagnostics, informatics and health economics to support the development and implementation of novel diagnostics.
The GMP enabled Pathology for Discovery, Development and Delivery of Diagnostics (PD4) platform embedded within the Laboratory Medicine Building at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital enables costs and cultures to be shared and development pipelines to be firmly rooted in clinical practice and widely translatable. Accessible to researchers and industry across the development pathway, the PD4 platform provides opportunities to facilitate development of molecular diagnostics, associated technologies and software. This is enabling a range of outcomes including: new molecular diagnostics for clinical trials and clinical practice; enhancement of molecular diagnostic and pathology services; improved efficiency and cost savings and transfer of expertise and assays across the Node network.
Through partnership with six companies including Aridhia Informatics, BioClavis, Illumina, Leica Biosystems, Sistemic and ThermoFisher Scientific, GMP has provided enhanced opportunities for communication, knowledge exchange, and collaborative research with industry.
Industry reach has been broadened through a programme of industry introductions to pathologists/molecular diagnostics and through exhibitor and networking opportunities involving 19 industry partners at two Node symposium events.
The GMP has delivered a research pipeline driven by multi-disciplinary project teams, which includes the development of 11 candidate diagnostics including:
- Two tests that predict therapeutic response in rheumatoid arthritis patients
- Two targeted panels to stratify patients with pancreatic cancer
- A point of care diagnostic to measure cardiovascular biomarkers
- A clinical test for determining adherence to drugs in hypertension
- An Assay for Cell of Origin Classification of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Subtypes
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