Dr. Ivanov and his team from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) are working on the development of optimized methods for the lysis ("breakage") of cells and the digestion of proteins, two important steps in the preparation of samples for scientific evaluation. PCT was chosen as the primary method to be evaluated. The researchers reported that PCT improved protein identification and quantitative analysis, and demonstrated that such improvements could be crucial to the discovery of new important biomarkers, particularly from the membranes of cells.
Dr. Schneider and his colleagues at Target Discovery, Inc., are working on the development of a new treatment guidance diagnostic for ovarian cancer patients. To that end, TDI scientists reported on their success in using PCT with specialized chemical reagents to optimize the extraction of intact functional proteins from cell membranes, a difficult yet vital step in their work. The TDI scientists concluded that PCT was an extremely powerful and versatile technology that could offer advantages in a wide variety of important research applications, including general sample preparation, the facilitation and acceleration of key chemical reactions, and access to specific types of proteins that have simply not been routinely available to scientists in the past.
Dr. Gross and her colleagues at PBI and the HSPH are working on the development of a new, automated method for the extraction of intact mitochondria from a variety of tissues. Defects in mitochondrial function have been linked to many diseases, including cancer, Type II diabetes, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's dementia. To help develop therapies and cures for these diseases, studies need to be performed on intact mitochondria extracted from various tissues, a difficult problem at the present time. The researchers reported on a new application of PCT for gentle tissue lysis and subsequent extraction of intact mitochondria. The resulting automated method was reported to offer clear advantages over manual homogenization methods, including better reproducibility and the ability to process multiple samples simultaneously in an unattended fashion.
Source Pressure BioSciences, Inc.