Protein Sample Pretreatment Microfluidic Chip for Proteiomics Investagation and Cancer Rapid Detection

The goal of this proposal is to assist the study of proteomics in cancer by using microfluidic technology. Because protein is the main substance that regulates biological function, many research groups are studying cancer in terms of protein level. Recently, the study of proteomics is rapidly booming due to the advanced studying tools. For example, a mass spectrometry can be used to quantitatively measure the concentration of protein in body fluid. However, one of the bottleneck of protein study using mass spectrometry is the long sample pretreatment time. For example, to extract a target protein from cell lysate may take more than 20 hours whereas the measuring time for protein in mass spectrometry may take only several minutes. Therefore, if the protein sample pretreatment time can be shorted and the processes can be automatically, the overall efficiency can be improved dramatically. In this proposal, we cooperate with a group dedicating in proteomics study and try to use microfluidic technology to achieve rapid sample pretreatment process of protein. Three major issues are going to be addressed. 1. The sample pretreatment time is too long for the measurement of BRAF protein concentration in tumor cell by mass spectrometry. 2. The automatic and rapid sample pretreatment of matrix metalloproteinases for rapid cancer screening. 3. A microfluidic platform of autoantibody measurement for oral cancer rapid screening. We hope the development of techniques can assist the study of proteomics through the proposed method.

Project ID:PB10701-0536
External Project ID:MOST105-2221-E182-036-MY3