Innovation and transparency at the heart of Olink’s culture – details of the technology behind the Olink Explore high-throughput proteomics platform published in the journal,[...]

Press release: UPPSALA, Sweden, December 6, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Olink Holding AB (publ) (Nasdaq: OLK) today announced a new publication on Olink's PEA technology, providing an invaluable resource to the scientific community.

We are proud to share a recently published peer-review publication in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics. This is the first publication describing the details behind Olink's Explore platform, with Proximity Extension Assay (PEA) technology coupled to readout using NGS (Next Generation Sequencing). Olink's Target panels with PEA coupled to qPCR readout have been cited previously in over 700 peer-publications.

The article describes the technology, workflow and protocol for the ground-breaking method based on the already proven PEA technology in combination with NGS read-out. For many years, there has been a clear need and a growing demand for larger proteomic studies that can exploit the diagnostic potential held within the low abundant plasma proteome. Olink® Explore 1536 was launched in June 2020 and with the launch of Olink® Explore 3072, almost 3000 validated proteins can now be measured simultaneously and analysed with 384 samples per run.

The protocol described in the new publication contains an innovative and automated sample preparation workflow for high throughput readout while consuming a minimal amount of sample. The performance of the platform has already been demonstrated in various disease and wellness studies detecting novel biomarkers for early diagnosis and disease monitoring, as well as providing a better understanding of the proteome in healthy as well as disease cohorts. Despite the relatively recent launch of the Explore platform, this has already led to several publications in prestigious peer-reviewed publications. The enthusiastic uptake of this game-changing technology by the scientific community will likely result in a rapidly increasing number of publications citing its use, and the new publication written by members of Olink's outstanding R&D team will be an important resource and reference point for future publications from our customers. The original publication describing PEA with qPCR readout from 2014 has been cited well over 350 times to date.

Proteins are described as the building blocks of life and are required for the structure and function of all cells in the body. They are the main targets in drug development and in diagnostic testing and are commonly monitored over time as they represent the interaction between phenotype and environmental and lifestyle factors. Proteins can be used as strong predictors for diseases as well as for patient stratification and disease subtyping and may also act as surrogate markers in clinical trials to predict clinically meaningful endpoints. However, proteins are far more complex to measure than DNA, and most current proteomics technologies have failed to deliver on critical performance parameters such as specificity, sensitivity, throughput, and dynamic range. The targeted approach of immunoassays has multiple advantages over untargeted approaches such as mass spectrometry, the most important of these being assay sensitivity, throughput and reproducibility following sample preparation.

"We are very proud to further develop our already commercialized technology with disruptive methods and use the already proven PEA technology in combination with NGS read-out which has led to an increased throughput (128x compared with Olink® Target 96). This advancement will have a major impact on the discovery of new biomarkers for disease prediction and prognosis and contribute to the development of the rapidly evolving fields of wellness monitoring and precision medicine," says Ida Grundberg, Chief Scientific Officer, of Olink Proteomics, one of the authors of the abstract.