Acquisition of a Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor: Enhancing Biomedical (Bio)Molecular Recognition Projects

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Tulane University has a strong commitment to conducting cutting-edge biomedical research and its investigators have received over $50 million in NIH funds in the last fiscal year alone. In particular, Tulane aims to achieve its long-term biomedical goal of alleviating the burden of disease by fostering interdisciplinary teams of researchers to work together to solve over-arching biomedical issues. As part of this effort, a group of eleven investigators spanning three Schools (Science/Engineering, Tropical Medicine/Public Health, and Medicine) at Tulane and two researchers from nearby Xavier University of Louisiana, an HBCU, are working to develop a core of excellence in (bio)molecular recognition. This diverse group of researchers, ranging from chemists to virologists to immunologists, are studying fundamental aspects of various protein-protein, protein-small molecule, protein-DNA, DNA-small molecule, and small molecule-small molecule interactions, with the ultimate goal of aiding in the development of therapeutic and diagnostic agents for diseases ranging from cancer to malaria to viral fever. What is a common thread in these projects is the critical need for quantitative characterization of kinetic and thermodynamic parameters of (bio)molecular interactions. While this core of researchers has access to many other techniques for measuring binding (including fluorescence polarization, isothermal titration calorimetry, and nuclear magnetic resonance), a key cornerstone for the analysis of (bio)molecular interactions is lacking. Specifically, Tulane does not possess a functional surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instrument. The requested SPR based Biacore T200 is especially suited for the needs of the user group because it requires minimal sample, has high sensitivity, is high throughput, and has built in software for immunological screening. The Biacore T200 will be housed in the John Bennett Johnston Health and Environmental Research Building (JBJ) building that has been newly renovated, via NIH funds, with the precise goal of fostering interdisciplinary research. The Biacore T200 will be operated and maintained by Dr. D. Grimm, an instrumentation specialist, who has over 20 years of experience working in the Tulane Central Instrumentation Facility and currently is the assistant director of the facility. The servie contract and yearly supplies for the T200 will be covered from user fees with the explicit backstop from the leadership of Tulane.