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The sequencing of the human genome and identification of the genes encoded within it, create a new challenge that involves assigning functionality to these sequences. In most cases, the functional expression of the gene sequence is a protein with a characteristic structure and role to play in the body.
It is estimated that the completion of the human genome will lead to as many as 80,000 sequences for potential protein targets. As promised, the field of genomics has delivered a massive amount of new information, but for the most part has been unable to identify valid drug targets. The gene sequence reveals little about protein structures and functions and their relevance to a disease. Proteomics seeks to provide functional information on all proteins. Proteomics is therefore more of a concept, combining the use of several different technologies in order to provide new information about proteins.
The pace of genomic-based approaches has placed new demands on basic protein chemistry methodologies, which in the past employed serial analytical processes. Newer technologies have enabled the parallel processing of many samples employing mass spectrometry and have accelerated protein characterization and identification to meet the challenges of these large-scale proteomics projects.
Such projects are changing the way drug discovery and disease treatment will be conducted in the future. The key difference from what has been practiced in the past is the demand for higher throughput and the drive to carry out many analytical processes in parallel. This is being led by powerful new tools designed to accelerate protein identification. However, there is still a need to reduce the complexity of samples, such as plasma or cellular lysates in order to remove some of the high abundance proteins in a mixture to allow for the study of the lower abundance, regulatory proteins. This important step has stimulated considerable interest with many classical chromatography or electrophoresis approaches being evaluated. There is a strong need for new technology in this area adapted for high throughput parallel processing.
ProMetic's Mimetic Ligand™ technology should be viewed as a source of two important separation tools for Proteomic discovery:
i) a source of highly specific ligands for the removal of abundant proteins such as albumin or immunoglobulin, and
ii) a source of libraries of diverse chemical ligand structures for protein discovery applications, used to screen a large number of samples in parallel in order to identify differences.
ProMetic is currently developing a range of consumable products to be used by scientists in protein research along with a high throughput screening robotics and a bioinformatics interface.
As a supplier of enabling technology to the proteomics industry, ProMetic is strategically positioned to capitalize on this growth.
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