Thermo Fisher Scientific is helping Pronota discover and validate disease biomarkers faster with its Heavypeptide Fastrack service.
Heavy peptides are isotopically labelled peptides used as internal standards in mass spectrometry experiments to identify and quantify specific proteins of interest in biological samples.
Traditionally, selection of the peptides needed for these experiments and final peptide purification has been time consuming.
Fastrack speeds up the process of peptide selection and purification by providing a selection of crude heavy peptides to immediately begin developing protein assays.
The crude peptides are used in mass spectrometry setup and initial analysis to identify the best proteotypic peptides.
Once a customer has identified its candidates, Thermo Fisher uses retained crude stock to quickly produce the final purified heavy peptides as Thermo Scientific Heavypeptide Aqua kits.
This cuts process time and eliminates the need for two separate syntheses.
It produces highly sensitive results and, because only the peptides specific to the final protein candidates are purified, reduces customer costs.
Fastrack is proving an advantage for Thermo Fisher customers such as Pronota, a pioneer in biomarker validation through mass spectrometry based in Ghent, Belgium.
Pronota is developing next-generation diagnostic tests from the protein biomarkers it discovers and validates in house.
In addition, the company collaborates with pharmaceutical companies by providing biomarker discovery and validation in a wide range of clinical and pre-clinical biological samples.
'In the past, we had to wait four to five weeks for purified peptides,' said Katleen Verleysen, vice president of operations and technology development at Pronota.
'Now, we get the crude peptides in about 10 days and can start building our assays right away.
'Coupled with our in-house workflow, this means we can now put together highly sensitive, multiplex protein assays in less than six weeks, significantly accelerating biomarker research and development.' Pronota uses a discovery platform called Masstermind to discover low-abundance biomarker candidates - proteins whose levels are consistently changing in response to disease or drug treatment.
The Massterclass biomarker verification platform then employs Thermo Fisher Heavypeptides to measure the levels of each of the candidates in large groups of samples.
Using a fractionation method that bypasses the time and cost required to raise antibodies, Pronota can detect and quantify specific target proteins present at low concentrations in the sample.
The company expects to achieve even greater precision and sensitivity with the recent installation of the Thermo Scientific TSQ Vantage triple-stage quadrupole mass spectrometer.
'With the TSQ Vantage, we expect to be able to achieve 10 to 100 fold increase in sensitivity, enabling us to quantify proteins in the picogram per milliliter concentration range in blood and other complex samples,' said Dr Huw Davies, director of business development at Pronota.
