SBIR Phase I: New Methods for Studies of Single Cells

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段（SBIR）项目将应用多光子检测（MPD）来量化单个细胞中包含和分泌的微量蛋白质。基因组学的成功导致需要改进细胞蛋白质含量的知识（蛋白质组学）。所有蛋白质的阐明需要更好的方法来研究低丰度蛋白质，因为大多数“分子开关”预期以低于10，000个拷贝/细胞表达。本项目的目标是进一步提高MPD增强免疫分析的灵敏度，使其降低到几个zeptomole/样品的水平，以研究细胞内重要细胞因子家族的加工过程（IL-1，IL-18）和研究单个细胞中半胱天冬酶的水平。该项目中将开发的技术的商业应用是在迅速扩大的蛋白质组学市场，特别是在低丰度蛋白质组学领域。这个市场目前估计在2亿美元左右，预计在未来几年将增长数倍。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I (SBIR) project will apply Multi Photon Detection (MPD) to quantify the minute amounts of proteins contained in and secreted from a single cell. The successes of genomics have led to the need for improved knowledge of the protein content of cells (proteomics). The elucidation of all proteins requires better methods for the study of low abundance proteins because the majority of "molecular switches" are expected to be expressed at less than 10,000 copies per cell. Thegoals of this project are to further improve the sensitivity of the MPD-enhanced immunoassays down tothe level of a few zeptomole/sample, to study intracellular processing of the important family of cytokines (IL-1, IL-18) and to study the levels of caspases in a single cell.The commercial applications of the technology to be developed in this project are in the rapidly expanding proteomics market, especially in the area of low abundance proteins proteomics. This market is currently estimated at around $ 200 million and expected to grow severalfolds over the next few years.