KSEF KCF: microRNA Array Technology and microRNA Biomarkers for Various Human Diseases

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are recently discovered novel endogenous small RNAs (-22 nucleotides) that have been implicated to play important roles in human development and various diseases. MiRNA array technology is a key, high-throughput technology to study the global expression of miRNAs in different normal and abnormal biological processes. Different human diseases have been shown to have distinct miRNA expression patterns and unique miRNA biomarkers. The potential market for miRNA array and biomarkers includes array service for bioscience research, clinical diagnosis, or being part of grant proposal subcontract. Various miRNA array platforms have been developed over the last four years. We have recently established a sensitive miRNA array platform in our laboratory for the study of miRNAs in humans and mice. Our array platform has been optimized with various titrations to a linear range. New methods for miRNA probe selection, designing, miRNA isolation and labeling, data adjustment, normalization and clustering analysis have also been introduced to improve array analysis, which has been published by us and covered by a pending US patent as well. This array platform has been successfully applied in identifying novel miRNA biomarkers in prostate cancer cells and type-II diabetes and will be widely useful for various kinds of other disease studies. The unique need of a miRNA array platform and its related unsolved issues in the current market are: (1) increasing demand of extensive application in research, clinical, and diagnostic areas; (2) potential false positive results and the need of validation of miRNA array results; and (3) still a time-consuming and expensive service at this moment. Towards these objectives and issues, here, we propose to establish a miRNA array service by providing: 1. High-efficient, low-cost and reliable miRNA array platform; 2. Short turn-around analysis of microRNA profiles of customer samples; 3. Screening for diagnostic miRNA biomarkers for various human diseases; 4. Customer miRNA array result validation. The special advantages of this proposed miRNA array platform and the related service are: (1) significantly lowcost and high-fidelity with high market competition potential, (2) simple process and a short turnaround time, and (3) representing a technology of the state-of-the-art level that was recognized by peer-review and published in the prestigious international journal "RNA" in 2007.