L2M NSERC - Fibre-optic label-free single protein analysis for more efficient drug discovery assays

我们建议对一种产品进行市场研究/开发，以测量单分子蛋白质的相互作用。该设备将由一次性销售的光学单元(光源、光学部件、电子部件)和将与最终用户的样品物理接触的消耗品部件(纳米图案光纤)组成。该设备将由制药实验室的研究人员在药物发现管道的早期阶段使用。它可以提供关于蛋白质结合的快速(几个小时)信息。这种方法比目前的分析方法更快地得到结果，它可以在较小的样品尺寸上进行(这节省了样品放大的时间和成本)，并且不需要任何标记或特殊的化学物质来制备样品(又一次节省了成本)。

We are proposing perform market research/development for a product to measure single molecule protein interactions. The device will consist of an optical unit (light source, optical components, electrical components) as a one-off sale, and a consumable part (a nano-patterned optical fibre) that will come into physical contact with the end user's samples. The device would be utilised in the early stages of the drug discovery pipeline by researchers in pharmaceutical labs. It can provide fast (a few hours) information on protein binding. This method provides a result more quickly than current assays, it can be performed on smaller sample sizes (which saves time and cost in scale-up of sample) and does not require any labelling or special chemistry to prepare the samples (another time and cost saving).