Farfield
is a proud partner in the European FP7 programme ASMENA, which held its first
annual project review meeting recently in Budapest. The project will run over
three years, and aims to develop new platforms for drug screening and analytical
profiling based on in-vitro measurements of functional and conformational change
in membrane proteins. The consortium consists of 15 partners in 7 countries
and are world leading experts on surface functionalization, membrane self-assembly,
biosensing and membrane protein functional measurements. Under this project
their complementary competences can be put together on the European level to
create a timely breakthrough in the area.
Current drug screening assays targeting membrane proteins rely to a large extent
on fluorescence based techniques, relying on an unnatural attachment/component
of the target protein in question, which in the worst case can lead to false
readouts. Thus there is an increasing interest in label free methods. Building
on this, the core aim of the project is to develop functional based assays based
on electrical and optical measurement techniques.
Farfield’s contribution to the project is focussing on developing membrane
protein assays based on the ability of the Dual Polarisation Interferometry
(DPI) technique to probe conformational changes in molecules. Together with
the technologies developed with the other partners, Farfield believes such tools
will allow a shortened time and cost in drug lead development by increased predictability
as well as contribute to fundamental understanding of structure-function relationship
of membrane proteins.
More information can be obtained from the ASMENA website at: http://www.asmena.ethz.ch/
