A biomarker is a biological parameter (gene, metabolite or protein) that is indicative of a physiological or pathological state. For example, cholesterol is a biomarker used to identify risk of heart disease.

Biomarkers are investigated across many biological fields to use as indicators of disease states in diagnostics, provide targets for therapeutic intervention in the pharmaceutical industry, provide indicators of crop qualities within the agricultural field or as QC markers for the food industry.

The major problem in biomarker discovery is the presence of highly abundant proteins in most samples which act as screens for the lower abundance proteins often of interest as biomarkers. It is a major challenge for the proteomics field to devise strategic for removal of high abundance proteins and allow investigation of the extremely low abundant proteins which are so often of interest to researchers.

APAF is heavily involved in biomarker discovery and as such opened the Biomarker Discovery APAF Laboratory at Macquarie University in May 2005. This laboratory is focused on the clearance of high abundance proteins and the investigation of low abundance markers in fields as broad as cancer research and egg quality.

APAF is developing new forms of cyclic abundant protein immunodepletion (CAPI) technologies based upon chicken antibodies (IgYs) technology where immuno-affinity based approaches are used to clear the bulk of proteins from human biofluids plasma and low abundance proteins of interest become “visible” for further investigation.

APAF is actively seeking commercial biomarker discovery collaborations utilising the CAPI technology.

APAF also can make and purify IgY antibodies against conserved human protein antigens that are not amenable to antibody production using other mammalian systems.