Researchers Use the ProteOn™ XPR36 system to Study the Mechanisms Underlying Cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Other Conditions

The webinar series showcases the latest cancer and disease research utilizing the ProteOn XPR36 protein interaction array system, an instrument that uses surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to generate rich, label-free kinetic binding data. Previously presented topics include the use of SPR for the identification and characterization of phosphoinositide signaling lipids that have been linked to cancer and in studies aimed at understanding protein misfolding, aggregation, and tissue deposition associated with neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“The webinars introduced the latest applications of SPR technology for drug discovery workflows and provided valuable updates on the instrument’s software and hardware,” said Dr Ralf J. Hosse, Antibody Engineering Group Leader at Roche Glycart in Switzerland.

Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease Applications
In a July 2012 webinar, Dr Lily Sommer of the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester, U.K., described the identification and characterization of novel phosphoinositide-binding proteins using the ProteOn XPR36 system. Phosphoinositides are signaling lipids whose misregulation has been linked to cancer. The studies were undertaken using Bio-Rad’s ProteOn liposome capturing kit, which uses DNA hybridization to selectively capture liposomes to detect phosphoinositide-protein interactions.

Marco Gobbi of the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, Italy hosted a webinar session titled “Novel Applications of SPR to Study Amyloidogenic Peptides and Proteins.” He discussed novel SPR screening applications for both mutation analysis and investigating the effects anti-amyloidogenic drug candidates. The results of this work were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in June 2012.

An increasing number of diseases are now being associated with misfolding, aggregation, and tissue deposition of specific proteins, such as in Alzheimer’s disease. Soluble oligomers of the amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide play a key role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, but their elusive nature makes detection challenging. Gobbi and his team demonstrated that SPR measurements can be particularly useful for the kinetic analysis of the elongation of amyloid fibrils and the detection of soluble oligomeric species, which cannot be achieved by other techniques.  

Best Practices in SPR
The webinar series kicked off with a session that focused on guidelines developed by Professor Gideon Schreiber of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel advising researchers on how to best perform label-free interaction analysis. Dr Schreiber is well known in the label-free field and has hosted and chaired many conferences on this topic.

Drug Discovery and Development Applications
Dr Dalia Shezifi, manager of the Bio-Rad Haifa Applications Team in Israel, focused on label-free analysis of small molecules and peptides binding to liposomes. Her work demonstrated how the ProteOn liposome capturing kits have been used to address important issues in drug development, such as the binding of small molecule drugs to liposomes when estimating the intestinal absorptivity of new drugs.

To conclude the series, Gary Ross, a Bio-Rad field application specialist, described how the ProteOn system was used to perform antibody quantification and full protein kinetic analysis in a single 45-minute experiment. This application is an important advance for researchers involved in antibody screening, as it provides rich data in a single experiment on a single platform, saving bench time.

“The presentations were a good way to inspire new ideas and assays that may be performed in the future,” said Johan Nilvebrant, a PhD student at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

New Season, New Series
Bio-Rad’s next SPR webinar series will take place this fall, kicking off on Sept. 25 with a presentation by Dr Carlotta Chiappa, a research scientist at the DiaSorin Research Center in Geranzano, Italy, on antibody screening for the development of a diagnostic test for Clostridium difficile. In October, Dr Jonathan Popplewell, a Bio-Rad application scientist, will present a webinar focusing on best practices for SPR data processing and downstream analysis. Dr Lisa Scalfone, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine, will talk about how the ProteOn XPR36 system was used in a novel workflow to develop antibodies against the influenza virus. The last speaker in the fall series, Dr Ladislav Bumba, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Microbiology in Prague, Czech Republic, will discuss the analysis of the interactions of bacterial toxins with target cell molecules in bacterial pathogenesis.

Please visit http://bit.ly/PO_Webinar_Registration to register. 

All the webinars from this series can be viewed at http://bit.ly/ProteOn_YouTube.