I-Corps: High-throughput screening platform for complex visual properties

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种技术，使蛋白质和细胞的快速和经济高效的工程。这项技术有可能加速多种生物产品的开发，如基于蛋白质的生物传感器、酶、治疗蛋白和遗传电路。这项技术可能会产生更环保的方法来生产现有的材料，并加快药物的开发。生物制药行业在治疗和诊断方面的发展缓慢、昂贵且有风险；进入市场的药物往往需要一个漫长的发现和开发过程，需要10年以上的时间，平均成本为10 - 20亿美元。该平台旨在更有效地开发生物产品。这个I-Corps项目旨在开发一种基于显微镜的生物工程平台，可以以前所未有的速度设计蛋白质和细胞的空间和时间特性。该平台可以使用定制的计算机视觉软件和光介导的单细胞检索方法来进行单细胞水平的筛选，从而将创新的速度提高几个数量级。筛选过程和分析可以调整以适应不同实验环境下特定工作流程的需要。通过优化荧光蛋白探针（生物学家常用的可视化工具），证明了该平台的实用性。使用该平台，可以测试数百万种蛋白质变体，并以最稳定的荧光输出识别变体。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a technology that enables rapid and cost-effective engineering of proteins and cells. The technology has the potential to accelerate the development of many types of biological products such as protein-based biosensors, enzymes, therapeutic proteins, and genetic circuits. The technology could results in more environmentally-friendly methods of producing existing materials and faster development of pharmaceuticals. The bio-pharma industry suffers from slow, expensive, and risky development of therapeutics and diagnostics; The drugs that reach the market often require a lengthy discovery and development process that takes over a decade with an average cost of $1-2 billion. This platform seeks to develop bio-products more efficiently.This I-Corps project seeks to develop a microscopy-based bioengineering platform that can design spatial and temporal properties of proteins and cells at unprecedented speed. This platform may increase the speed of innovation by several magnitudes using custom computer vision software and a light-mediated, single-cell retrieval method to conduct single-cell level screening. The screening process and analyses can be tuned to fit the needs of a specific workflow in different experimental contexts. The platform's utility is demonstrated by optimizing fluorescent protein probes, common visualization tools used by biologists. Using this platform, millions protein variants are tested and variants are identified with the most stable fluorescence output.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.