I-Corps: High affinity and high specificity ligand binding materials

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力源于这样一个事实，即在一些供水系统中检测到药物和除草剂的浓度可能会影响人类生物学。此外，这些污染物还在继续积累。目前的瓶装水和家庭过滤系统通常不能去除这些化学物质，而能够充分净化水的方法既昂贵又会产生大量的副产品。有一个重大的机会，安全，廉价，易于使用的方法来净化水。这项创新有望最终发展成为家庭、民用和商业用途的廉价、可重复使用的滤水器。这个I-Corps项目将评估实验室开发的材料的商业化潜力，这些材料专门结合和去除水中的药物和除草剂污染物。该材料具有通过基因融合与活性蛋白质功能化的独特能力，而不会影响材料组装或添加蛋白质的活性。这些功能化的蛋白质基材料可以特异性地去除水中的生物活性污染物和药物。通过在这些材料中添加新的配体结合蛋白，本研究开发的过滤器可以很容易地适应于结合各种各样的化学物质，甚至毒素，具有非常高的亲和力和特异性。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project stems from the fact that pharmaceuticals and herbicides have been detected in some water supplies at concentrations that may have the potential to affect human biology. Furthermore, these contaminants continue to accumulate. Current water bottlers and home filtration systems do not typically remove these chemicals, and the approaches that do sufficiently purify water are expensive and generate large volumes of polluted water as a by-product. There is a significant opportunity for safe, inexpensive, and easily used method to purify water. The innovation is expected to be eventually developed as inexpensive, reusable water filters for home, civic, and commercial use. This I-Corps project will evaluate the commercialization potential of materials developed in the lab that specifically bind and remove pharmaceutical and herbicide contaminants from water. The material has a unique ability to be functionalized with active proteins by gene fusion, without compromising either materials assembly or the activity of the added protein. These functionalized protein-based materials can specifically remove bioactive contaminants and pharmaceuticals from water. By adding new ligand binding proteins to these materials, the filters developed in this work can be readily adapted to bind a wide variety of chemicals and even toxins with very high affinity and specificity.