SBIR Phase I: A Toolbox For Protein Sample Pretreatment

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在证明用于预处理复杂蛋白质样品的工具箱的可行性。从血清、组织或细胞裂解液中提取的蛋白质样品非常复杂。它们可以包含数十万种独特的蛋白质，其浓度可以变化10个数量级。该工具箱包括一个通用仪器，一个药筒和相关试剂，用于执行分离和分析所需的大部分样品预处理步骤。工具箱操作在一个新的物理原理，允许顺序操作的初始样品没有人工干预或物理转移的蛋白质溶液从一个操作到下一个。因此，用工具箱操作的蛋白质样品可以更可靠地生产，损失更少，样品污染的可能性更小。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是标准化可靠和快速的蛋白质样品预处理。蛋白质组学在多种健康相关领域发挥着越来越重要的作用，包括药物发现、先导物优化和毒性测试、阐明疾病进展机制以及诊断标记物的鉴定。在大多数这些追求中，蛋白质组学的潜在力量被蛋白质样品的复杂性所稀释。如果使用适当的预处理方法，“看不见的”蛋白质组可以被发现。这有可能提高这些领域所依赖的蛋白质组学数据的质量，从而为创造新的和改进的治疗方法、诊断方法和对疾病的理解提供可能性。商业案例是足够引人注目的，如果技术被证明是成功的，那么一个巨大的和潜在的有利可图的市场是可用的。此外，除了蛋白质组学之外，这项基础技术还可以解决其他潜在的应用，这可能会打开额外收入来源的大门。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of a toolbox that is used to pretreat complex protein samples. Protein samples derived from serum, tissues, or cell lysates are enormously complex. They can contain hundreds of thousands of unique protein species that can vary in concentration by 10 orders of magnitude. The toolbox, comprising a general-purpose instrument, a cartridge and allied reagents, is intended to perform the majority of the sample pretreatment steps that are necessary to prepare it for separation and analysis. The toolbox operates on a novel physical principle that allows the sequential manipulation of the initial sample without labor intervention or the physical transfer of the protein solution from one operation to the next. Consequently, the protein sample that has been manipulated with the toolbox can be produced more reliably, with fewer losses, and with less likelihood of sample contamination. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to standardize reliable and rapid protein sample pretreatment. Proteomics is assuming a larger role in a variety of health-related fields, including drug discovery, lead optimization and toxicity testing, elucidating the mechanism of disease progression, and identification of diagnostic markers. In most of these pursuits, the potential power of proteomics is diluted by the complexity of protein samples. If proper pretreatment methods are used, the "unseen" proteome can be brought to light. This has the potential to increase the quality of proteomics data upon which these areas rely, and thereby offers the possibility to create new and improved therapeutics, diagnostics and understanding of disease. The business case is sufficiently compelling that, if the technology is demonstrated successfully, then a large and potentially lucrative market is available. In addition, there are other potential applications beyond proteomics that the underlying technology can address, which potentially opens the door to additional revenue streams.