A New Platform for Detailed Analysis of High Value Proteins

我们需要一台Agilent 6560C离子迁移质谱仪来加速我们的工程生物学平台。全球工业正在转向使用生物基和可再生资源来生产化学品，如塑料、洗涤剂、染料和药品。工程生物学是对细胞进行修饰的术语，可以成为我们的“未来工厂”。它允许研究人员选择或修改细胞执行的普通化学过程，并为它们提供新的化学过程。以哺乳动物细胞为例，如典型的中国卵巢细胞，合成生物学家可以生产极有价值的蛋白质药物，如抗癌剂，疫苗和罕见疾病的治疗方法。虽然我们在UoE的专家团队现在有强大的自动化系统来修饰哺乳动物细胞，但我们很难测试它们的工作效果如何，产品有多好（和安全）。目前，产品质量的评估是通过简单地测量产品的产量来进行的，并且不能完全确定这些蛋白质的结构或共同修饰，这些结构或修饰可能是安全性和有效性的原因。全面的产品质量评估必须通过多个设施中的多个复杂的结构和化学方法来完成。这意味着我们无法在工业和现代学术研究所需的快速周转时间内优化工程生物学平台。Agilent 6560C是一种可以检测高价值蛋白质产品质量的仪器。有了这个系统，我们可以“关闭工程生物学的循环”，并通过使用快速测试，改进我们的工程细胞，以制造更安全，更好的产品。通过将这种能力添加到爱丁堡大学的生物组学和支持设施组合中，我们将为世界领先的新药研究人员提供通过早期基因工程实现新药想法的技术（来源：Edinburgh Genome Foundry）通过新药的早期生产，（通过爱丁堡蛋白质生产设施）来测试该药物的质量（通过这种新仪器）。生产这种高度抛光的早期药物可以加速其临床试验和医疗用途的吸收。

We request an Agilent 6560C ion mobility mass spectrometer to accelerate our engineering biology platform.Industry globally is moving over to the use of bio-based and renewable sources for chemicals, such as plastics, detergents, dyes and medicines. Engineering biology is the term given to modifications of cells that can be our 'factories of the future'. It allows researchers to select or modify the ordinary chemical processes that the cells perform and provide them with new ones. In the case of mammalian cells such as the archetypical Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, synthetic biologists can produce extremely valuable protein medicines such as anti-cancer agents, vaccines and treatments for rare diseases.While our expert teams at UoE now have powerful automated systems for modifying mammalian cells, we struggle to test them to see how well they work and how good (and safe) the products are. Currently assessment of product quality is performed by simply measuring the yield of the products, and does not fully determine the structures or the modifications common to these proteins that can be responsible for safety and efficacy. Full product quality assessment must be done by multiple complex structural and chemical methods housed in multiple facilities. This means that we cannot optimise the engineering biology platform as well as we should be able to within the rapid turnaround times required by industry and modern academic research.The Agilent 6560C is an instrument that can characterise the product quality of high value proteins. With this system, we can 'close the loop' of engineering biology, and by using rapid testing, refine our engineered cells to make safer and better products. By adding this capability to EdinOmics and the portfolio of support facilities at the University of Edinburgh, we will provide world leading researchers into new medicines with the technology to take an idea for a new drug through early stage genetic engineering (via the Edinburgh Genome Foundry), through early stage production of a new medicine (via the Edinburgh Protein Production Facility) to testing of that medicine for quality (via this new instrument). Production of such highly polished early stage medicines can accelerate their uptake for clinical trials and hence medical use.