Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. (“Protea”) a leader in the bioanalytics industry, announces the use of its proprietary LAESIâ technology to allow scientists the ability for the first time to look inside cells in their native state to discover new molecular markers for diagnosing human disease.
Steve Turner, CEO of Protea, said, “Much of the new medical tests and treatments for human disease will come from an understanding of the changes that occur within cells that are, for example, infected with viruses or are fighting disease. Biomolecular analysis of different components of single cells has been a dream of biologists for some time. The Vertes laboratory has shown that LAESI offers this breakthrough capability, generating the data rapidly, and without laborious sample pretreatment.”
In a paper published last week in the premier chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, researchers in the laboratory of Akos Vertes, PhD., Professor of Chemistry at George Washington University (GWU), said LAESI mass spectrometry was shown to enable the metabolic profiling of subcellular compartments of cells, allowing cells to be studied in their natural state. Large differences between the metabolites were found in the cell’s nucleus and the cytoplasm, and over 30 distinct metabolites were detected in the cell’s nucleus.
LAESI technology was invented in the Vertes laboratory and exclusively licensed to Protea Biosciences. Using LAESI mass spectrometry, large numbers of biomolecules can be rapidly identified and spatially mapped to cell structures, tissues, and fluids. The technology can be applied to live cells, providing a real time and accurate representation of distribution of molecules in native biological samples.
“We believe that microdissection of cells, combined with LAESI mass spectrometry, is breakthrough technology that can address important biological questions, including the molecular profiling of normal and diseased cells, and can give insight into the subcellular variations that result from diseases, as well as drug delivery. Protea is working to make single cell and subcellular bioanalytics available to biology researchers worldwide.”
Protea (www.proteabio.com) develops and markets LAESI bioanalytical technology that enables the direct analysis of proteins, metabolites, and other biomolecules in native biological samples, generating data used in pharmaceutical research and clinical medicine.
