Research:Proteomics

Introduction

The Need: It is universally recognized that early detection of cancer and coronary artery disease leads to dramatically improved health outcomes. Yet, there is great scarcity, of minimally invasive, economically feasible approaches to early detection. The ability to obtain early warning information from proteins and other molecules in blood or other biological fluids would represent an epochal advance. However, this approach is extraordinarily difficult, since many proteins need to be analyzed at the same time, the molecular population present in the blood is extremely diverse, and the fact that the proteins of interest are billion-fold less abundant that the most concentrated proteins. This poses the ultimate ‘needle-in-the-haystack’ problem.

Approach: Nanotechnology-based chips and particles (proteomic nanochips) are being developed to sort out and concentrate proteins of interest from blood samples. The chips and particles are interrogated with Mass Spectrometry, with no need for additional sample preparation steps, leading to the potential for very high-throughput.

from: http://nanomed.uth.tmc.edu/researches

Protein Candidates

• Albumin
• IgG
• IgA

transferrin

• haptoglobin
• alpha-1-antitrypsin

Silicon Channel

One method of enrichment includes the transportation of VEGF-117 (vascular endothelial growth factor) through silicon channels of 50nm.