SeraFILE™ - A Biomarker and Drug Discovery Engine
SeraFILE™ is a surface-based separations reagent set and associated protocols that addresses the disconnect between proteomics and functional mechanisms (patents pending). Clients and collaborators now employ it to simultaneously survey the functional characteristics of a targeted protein set for: feature comparisons and discovery, low-abundance enrichment, and for proteomic prospecting. SeraFILE™ uniquely enables the differentiation of conformational variants and allosteric characterization, critical data for drug development and not otherwise available with other proteomic methods. SeraFILE™ separations and protocols are seamless with existing proteomic assay and detection infrastructure, generating differential sub-proteomes efficiently and in parallel, compartmentalizing the functional characteristics that can define crude soluble protein samples.
The SeraFILE™ surface library is not based on conventional liquid chromatography stationary phases. Whereas conventional LC (green) suffers from a heterogeneous mix of binding energies, and Affinity (red) has exceedingly high binding energy, SeraFILE™ promotes weak, homogeneous binding - ideal for proteomic investigation. Each surface in the library has a singular mixed mode architecture consisting of some combination of ionic, aromatic, aliphatic and polymeric chemistry. Modest pH changes generate unique sub-proteomes with both differential abundance and functional characteristics.
The SeraFILE™ surface library provides:
- A parallel separations process that is open-ended and industrially productive.
- Enriched sub-proteomes towards targeted biologically functional conformations.
- New profiling techniques which generate signatures across a multiplicity of sub-proteomes and interrogations.
- A means to characterize enzyme regulation and related functional sub-states from disease.
- Discovery strategies that enrich catalytic activity and directly couple to drug development.
Secondary Interrogation
An immediate and direct hand-off simplifies secondary interrogation. Thus, molecular profiles can be generated from the SeraFILE sub-proteomes, combining enzyme activity (function), protein content and expression, and structure (post-translational modications) into one platform.
These data generated from the daughter subproteomes collectively provide a molecular profile (or "signature") of the starting sample. Comparisons of a critical number of clinically defined samples, can correlate proteins individually or as a nexus to disease; that is, the molecular profiles of the parent proteomes can be compared and contrasted on a sample to sample or inter-sample basis. Also, the anaylses can be view on an intra-sample basis, whereby the daughter sub-proteomes can be cataloged or indexed to, for example - the effects of small molecule functional modulation.
Along with comparison analyses, SeraFILE™ participates in three unique discovery avenues especially for biomarker and drug development:
- Functional Proteome Prospecting™, to enrich for low abundance functional biomarkers for sequence annotation and characterization,
- Conformerics™, to compartmentalize functional variants for small molecule drug response profiling from natural sources, and
- Rational Genome to Proteome Prospecting, for protein biomarker prospecting from gene expression targets.
SeraFILE™ Service Deliverables
ProFACT's proprietary menu of deliverables are client driven and can include aspects of function, PTM analysis, and protein content into one signature profile, thus providing:
- Unique Molecular Disease Signatures
- Pathway Catologing and Characterization
- Functional Proteome Prospecting™ strategies for biomarker discovery
- Conformerics™ Bioactive Target/Drug Assay Development
SeraFILE™
