Olink announces first core lab running the Olink Explore platform in Europe, making it available for more researchers

Olink announces first core lab running the Olink Explore platform in Europe, making it available for more researchers

UPPSALA, Sweden, May 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Olink Holding AB (publ) (Nasdaq: OLK) today announced that its Olink® Explore 1536/384 platform is now available to researchers in Europe through the SciLifeLab National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI) and the Affinity Proteomics Uppsala unit at SciLifeLab Clinical and Immunological platform (APU) by their combined capability SciLifeLab Explore lab. 

This is the first core lab in Europe certified to offer the Olink Explore platform, comprising four protein biomarker panels for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, oncology, neurology and inflammation. The platform enables researchers to define protein signatures that provide meaningful insights into human biology and dynamic changes in health and disease.

Through the launch of Olink® Explore 1536 as kits earlier this year, laboratories are now able to set up the Olink Explore platform, providing additional analysis capacity to researchers.

“This will further democratize the use of Olink in line with our mission to accelerate proteomics together with the scientific community. The objective is to create a better understanding of the origin of the disease, provide earlier and more accurate diagnoses with individualized treatment and enable more efficient and safer drug development. The SciLifeLab laboratory in Uppsala is our first EMEA laboratory to adopt Olink Explore, demonstrating the importance of academic partners in pioneering the establishment of new technologies. We are proud to be their selected partner”, says Jon Heimer, CEO of Olink.

By combining Olink’s patented proximity extension assay (PEA) technology with a high-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) readout on Illumina® NovaSeq and NextSeq instruments, close to 1,500 protein biomarker targets can be measured simultaneously in only a few microliters of biological sample, providing clinically relevant, actionable insights. This year, Olink plans to increase the library to approximately 3,000 protein biomarker targets.

The PEA technology is based on two matching antibodies binding to the target protein. When the complementary DNA tags from the two antibodies come into close proximity, the tags hybridize and are extended making a unique DNA barcode for each analyzed protein. After amplification, digital DNA counting is performed using NGS and the resulting counts represent the concentration of the protein in the sample.

This project has been made possible by grants from SciLifeLab and the Swedish Research Council’s Access to Infrastructure and by building a new joint-capability lab between NGI and APU at the Biomedical Centre (BMC) in Uppsala.

“We are proud that SciLifeLab will be the first certified service provider offering this technology for the Swedish research community and believe this is a first step enabling integrated multi-omics analyses in precision medicine”, says SciLifeLab Scientific Director Staffan Svärd (Uppsala University, UU).

The project's main applicant SciLifeLab researcher Ulf Gyllensten (UU) continues:
“We believe that an entity like SciLifeLab really can contribute to the concept of precision medicine in many ways and we feel confident that the SciLifeLab Explore lab will deliver important results to users working with different medical issues. By combining the phenotype data with data from the human genome we can find and define new biomarkers. Since the sequencing is already in place at NGI, we will now aim to develop methods for simultaneous large-scale analysis of protein, DNA, and RNA.” 

For more information on setting up Olink Explore in your facility, please contact:
Andrea Ballagi 
Email: andrea.ballagi@olink.com
Tel: +46708200635

Olink® Explore 1536 as kits offers high-multiplex proteomics with unmatched quality and throughput, which can deliver up to 1.3M protein measurements per week per NovaSeq instrument. Olink is also extending the flexibility of the platform by enabling screening of both the entire protein library and the four individual 384-plex panels that make up the library. The disease/biological process-focused panels are: Olink® Explore 384 Cardiometabolic, Olink® Explore 384 Inflammation, Olink® Explore 384 Neurology and Olink® Explore 384 Oncology.

More information about these panels is available - HERE

About Olink
Olink Holding AB (publ) (Nasdaq: OLK) is a company dedicated to accelerating proteomics together with the scientific community, across multiple disease areas to enable new discoveries and improve the lives of patients. Olink provides a platform of products and services which are deployed across major biopharmaceutical companies and leading clinical and academic institutions to deepen the understanding of real-time human biology and drive 21st century healthcare through actionable and impactful science. The company was founded in 2016 and is well established across Europe, North America and Asia. Olink is headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden. For more information, please visit www.olink.com