MethylTrap : chemical affinity reagents for reliable and reproducible PTM-targeted proteomics - Phase 1 application

甲基化是一种作为自然过程的一部分添加到蛋白质中的修饰。它很小，但很强大。当甲基被添加到蛋白质上或从蛋白质上移除时，它们就像开关一样，控制着许多生物事件的开/关变化。它通常对健康和疾病很重要。例如，在许多情况下，甲基化与可治疗的癌症转变为更具侵袭性的疾病形式有关。在任何给定的生物样本中，预计会有100或1000个甲基化蛋白，但研究人员通常只能识别其中的一小部分，因为它们的数量非常少。我们已经开发出可以选择性地结合甲基化蛋白部分的分子，这样就可以从复杂的生物样品中富集它们。我们的目标是将这种甲基富集技术商业化。研究人员可以利用这项技术在多种样品中发现更多的甲基化蛋白。为了证明这项技术的价值，我们的目标是证明它能够从多种癌细胞中富集样品，我们的目标是证明它可以用于定量实验，测量甲基化分析物的绝对数量，我们的目标是证明我们可以从真正的人类生物液体样品中富集和鉴定甲基化蛋白质。我们的目标是在两个不同的市场产生影响。当这种试剂作为一种研究工具可用时，它将推动有关甲基化的新的基础科学发现。该试剂还将最终为那些专门从事生物标志物发现和临床测试的人提供涉及甲基化蛋白标记的许多疾病的新的临床诊断。

Methylation is a modification that is added to proteins as a part of natural processes. It is small, but powerful. When methyl groups are added to or removed from proteins, they serve as switches that govern many on/off changes of biological events. It is often important for health and disease. For example, methylation is associated in multiple instances with the change of treatable cancer to a more aggressive form of the disease. There are expected to be 100's or 1000's of methylated proteins in any given biological sample, but researchers can often only identify a small part of them because they are present in very small amounts.We have developed molecules that can selectively bind to portions of methylated proteins, and in doing so can enrich them from complex biological samples. We are aiming to commercialize this methyl enrichment technology. This technology could be used by researchers to discover more methylated proteins in many kinds of samples. In order to prove the value of this technology, we are aiming to demonstrate its ability to enrich samples from multiple kinds of cancer cells, we are aiming to demonstrate that it can be used in quantitative experiments that measure absolute amounts of methylated analytes, and we are aiming to prove that we can enrich and identify methylated proteins from real human biological fluid samples.We aim to make an impact in two distinct markets. This reagent will power new basic science discoveries about methylation, when made available as a research tool. This reagent will also ultimately enable new clinical diagnostics for many diseases that involve methylated proteins markers, when made available to those who specialize in biomarker discovery and clinical testing.