PEPTIDE PRINTER FOR HIGH THROUGHPUT SCREENING

我们将建造一个肽“打印机”，能够在一个35毫米的“芯片”上放置10,000种不同的肽。为了实现这一目标，我们将在芯片上原位合成每个肽，打印每个肽的每个连续氨基酸。MicroFab的快速多通道打印机可以在30分钟内打印1万个氨基酸点。洗涤、漂洗、去保护和偶联周期可能需要30分钟，合成速度为1小时/残渣。在24小时内就能合成1万个不同的15 -分子。在第一阶段，我们将通过打印氨基酸微点，验证底物和附着化学，以及合成和验证肽来证明该原理。在第二阶段，我们将建造一台能够制造1534个肽“芯片”的原型打印机。多肽疫苗和多肽药物正迅速成为预防和治疗传染病的首选工具。这些努力受到合成用于筛选的肽的任务（和成本）的限制。我们的肽芯片可以将大规模肽筛选的成本和时间降低至少1倍，甚至可能降低100倍。肽是一个10亿美元/年的业务；1%的市场份额将是一笔可观的生意。建议的商业应用：疫苗候选表位、肽药物或表达蛋白（通过肽捕获）的高通量筛选都需要大规模平行的、基于肽芯片的方法。我们的系统可以率先进入市场，从而占据大部分市场。

We will build a peptide "printer" capable of putting 10,000 different peptides on a 35 mm "chip." To achieve this, we will synthesize each peptide in situ on the chip, printing each successive amino acid of each peptide. MicroFab's fast, multichannel printers can print 10,000 amino acid spots in under 30 minutes. Wash, rinse, deprotect, and coupling cycles might consume 30 minutes, yielding a synthesis rate of 1 hr/residue. An array of 10,000 different fifteen-mers could be synthesized in under 24hr. In Phase I we will prove the principle by printing amino acid microspots, verifying substrates and attachment chemistry, and synthesizing and verifying a peptide. In Phase II we will build a prototype printer capable of making 1534 peptide "chips." Peptide vaccines and peptide drugs are rapidly becoming tools of choice for prevention and treatment of infections disease. These efforts are rat- limited by the task (and cost) of synthesizing peptides for screening. Our peptide chips can lower the cost and the time of large scale peptide screening by at least 1-fold and probably 100-fold. Peptide are a $1 billion/yr business; 1% of the market would be a substantial business. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: High-throughput screening for vaccine-candidate epitopes, for peptide drugs, or for expressed proteins (by peptide capture) all require a massively parallel, peptide-chip based approach. Our system can be first- to-market and thus capture the bulk of that market.