Grant: Idea to Innovation

Methylation is a modification that is added to proteins as a part of natural processes. It is small, but powerful. When methyl groups are added to or removed from proteins, they serve as switches that govern many on/off changes of biological events. It is often important for health and disease. For example, methylation is associated in multiple instances with the change of treatable cancer to a more aggressive form of the disease. There are expected to be 100's or 1000's of methylated proteins in any given biological sample, but researchers can often only identify a small part of them because they are present in very small amounts.We have developed molecules that can selectively bind to portions of methylated proteins, and in doing so can enrich them from complex biological samples. We are aiming to commercialize this methyl enrichment technology. This technology could be used by researchers to discover more methylated proteins in many kinds of samples. In order to prove the value of this technology, we are aiming to demonstrate its ability to enrich samples from multiple kinds of cancer cells, we are aiming to demonstrate that it can be used in quantitative experiments that measure absolute amounts of methylated analytes, and we are aiming to prove that we can enrich and identify methylated proteins from real human biological fluid samples.We aim to make an impact in two distinct markets. This reagent will power new basic science discoveries about methylation, when made available as a research tool. This reagent will also ultimately enable new clinical diagnostics for many diseases that involve methylated proteins markers, when made available to those who specialize in biomarker discovery and clinical testing.