Purdue instrument to fashion custom-made proteo...( eact with those on the chip. They then ...)

"By this process, we should be able to create custom-made chips, each with different sets of proteins," Cooks said. "There is a wealth of potential basic knowledge about the body which experiments using these chips could reveal. A practical application for them would be as disease markers, for example for certain types of cancer."

One challenge still facing Cooks' team is determining how to maximize the number of proteins that remain biologically active through the process.

"Some proteins do survive the trip from cell to chip with their properties intact, but we want to minimize our losses," Cooks said. "Our process puts energy into these molecules, which can change their conformations and render them inactive. We'd like to reduce the heating and phase changes that are necessary to our method so we can reduce this possibility."

This research has been supported in part by Inproteo (formerly the Indiana Proteomics Consortium), an Indianapolis company that unites researchers from Purdue, Indiana University and Eli Lilly and Co. Inproteo's goal is to develop novel instrumentation and methodologies to unleash proteomics' potential to improve human health.

Cooks is associated with Bindley Bioscience Center, one of five interdisciplinary centers in Purdue's Discovery Park. The center encourages and supports interdisciplinary research initiatives between life sciences and engineering, both within and beyond Purdue.

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Contact: Chad Boutin
cboutin@purdue.edu
765-494-2081
Purdue University
14-Aug-2003