NEW METHOD FOR PROTEIN CHIPS

开发新的技术来评估生物活性分子，监测代谢状态和细胞对外界刺激的反应变得越来越重要。对大量靶标的同时定量是所提出的超灵敏专用蛋白质芯片概念的主要优势。我们注意到，通过使用适体（即核酸结构），完成了从快速发展的DNA寡核苷酸微阵列到蛋白质芯片的技术转移。MPD仪器（“敏感性”）和适体（“特异性”）的结合可能会彻底改变免疫诊断和蛋白质定量。因此，BioTraces和NeXstar已经开始共同努力，改进蛋白质、病毒和细菌的检测和定量。该项目的目标是测试MPD/Aptamer增强方法用于检测细胞因子目标，并将其性能与现有技术技术进行比较。建议的商业应用：MPD的广泛应用包括免疫分析和RNA/DNA分析。使用MPD增强技术，可以在低得多的浓度下量化生物分子的痕迹。MPD的一些最重要的应用是在免疫分析，定量PCR和直接检测DNA在少数拷贝水平。到2000年，这些市场预计将达到50亿美元/年。MPD可能占这个市场的百分之几。

It is increasingly important to develop the new techniques which permit to assess bioactive molecules and to monitor the metabolic status and cellular response to external stimulation. The concurrent quantification for a large number of targets is a major advantage of the proposed super-sensitive, dedicated protein chip concept. We note, that by use of aptamers,( i.e., nucleic acid constructs), a transfer of technology from the fast developing microarrays of DNA oligonucleotides to proteins chip is accomplished. The combination of MPD instrumentation ("sensitivity") and aptamers ("specificity") may revolutionize immunodiagnostics and protein quantification. Thus, BioTraces and NeXstar have initiated a joint effort towards the improved detection and quantitation of proteins, viruses and bacteria. The goal of this project is to test MPD/Aptamer enhanced methods for detection of cytokine targets and compare their performance with prior-art techniques. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: The wide range of applications for MPD includes immunoassays and RNA/DNA analysis. Using MPD enhanced techniques, traces of biological molecules can be quantified at much lower concentrations. Some of the most important applications of MPD are in immunoassays, quantitative PCR and direct detection of DNA at the few copies level. These markets are predicted to be about $5 billion/year by 2000. MPD may account for a few percent of this market.