I-Corps: Plasma-based Protein Footprinting

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps will be to enable faster development of protein-based therapeutic drugs, such as antibodies and biosimilars. The core technology allows for faster determination of structural features of such protein therapeutic agents, which is important because structure is essential to both the function and efficiency of a protein therapeutic. The technology can be applied at many points within a therapeutic's development, from the initial discovery and screening phases to testing a developed therapeutic's stability under a wide array of conditions and environments for quality control purposes. Given the significant fraction of protein therapeutics, specifically, within the rapidly growing biopharmaceutical market, we believe our technology will both be of significant value to this industry and enable faster development of therapeutics for treating diseases in the future. This I-Corps project further develops a technology that determines structural features of proteins in a liquid environment. This is significant not only because a protein's structure dictates its function and by learning about the structure much information is gained about the protein itself, but also because proteins natively exist within cells in liquid environments. A plasma is used to create a reactive molecule from water surrounding the protein, and by measuring the areas on the protein that get labeled with this molecule, one can visualize relevant regions of the protein. When another element is added that changes the structure of the protein, or binds to and masks one side/face of the protein, this is reflected is changing levels or areas of modification by the reactive molecule. In this way, the technique can quickly map protein structural changes.