[이뉴스투데이 전한울 기자] KAIST announced on the 23rd that a research team led by Professor Jang Jae-beom of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor Yoon Young-gyu of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering has developed a multi-marker simultaneous detection technology that can simultaneously detect five times more protein biomarkers than existing technologies.
Biomarkers are biomolecules such as proteins, DNA, RNA, and metabolites that can detect changes in the body.
Recently, it has been revealed that the protein markers expressed in cancer tissues are different for each patient, and research results have been published that the prognosis of cancer and the reactivity of anticancer drugs are determined according to these differences. Accordingly, a technology for simultaneously detecting multiple protein markers in cancer tissues is absolutely required.
Accordingly, Professor Jang’s research team has developed a technology that allows simultaneous observation of five times more number of protein markers than existing technologies. This technology does not require special reagents or expensive equipment, so it is expected to be widely used for accurate diagnosis of cancer, development of anticancer drugs, and discovery of new protein markers.
This research, in which KAIST Advanced Materials Engineering Department Researchers Junyoung Seo, Yeonbo Shim, and Jiwon Kim participated as co-first authors, was published in the 13th volume of the international academic journal Nature Communications.
So far, precision cancer research has been focused on genome research, which analyzes genes inside cancer patient tissues. However, genetic analysis has a limitation in that it is not possible to know how many protein markers are actually expressed from this gene or in what spatial distribution they are expressed. Accordingly, recent research is moving toward the simultaneous analysis of the genome and proteomic.
In fact, as a result of analyzing protein markers inside cancer tissues of hundreds of breast cancer patients diagnosed with breast cancer through conventional genomic analysis, research results have been published that the patients can be divided into several subtypes with different survival rates and drug reactivity. In addition, in the case of immuno-oncology, a third-generation anticancer drug that has recently been attracting attention as a new drug to conquer cancer, it treats cancer by activating immune cells inside the cancerous tissue.
At this time, it has been reported that a large difference in drug reactivity appears depending on which immune protein marker is expressed inside the cancer tissue. As such, a technology for simultaneously detecting multiple protein markers in cancer tissues is essential for discovering new cancer subtypes, developing new drugs targeting each subtype, and recommending suitable anticancer drugs.
In the meantime, mass spectrometry image processing or fluorescence staining has been used to simultaneously detect multiple protein markers in cancer tissue. Mass spectrometry image processing has the advantage of being able to simultaneously detect multiple protein markers in one tissue, but has disadvantages in that it requires expensive special equipment, tissue is destroyed in the analysis process, and the entire process takes a long time. Fluorescence staining does not have such a disadvantage, but has a disadvantage that only three protein markers can be observed at a time.
Prof. Jang’s research team developed the ‘PICASSO’ technology, a technology that can simultaneously detect more than 15 and up to 20 protein markers at a time to solve the limitation of the fluorescence staining method. To this end, the research team developed a technology that can simultaneously use fluorescent molecules with similar emission spectra and accurately separate the signals of these fluorescent molecules. The research team succeeded in detecting a total of 45 protein markers by repeating the process of detecting 15 protein markers in one tissue three times using this technology.
The ‘PICASSO’ technology developed by Prof. Jang’s research team is the lowest cost among existing multi-marker simultaneous detection technologies and the fastest way to detect the largest number of protein markers, and will be used in cancer diagnosis and pharmaceuticals in the future very likely to be In the process of developing this technology, the research team announced that they have secured intellectual property rights for this technology by applying for 4 domestic patents, 3 US patents, 2 EPO (European patent) and PCT (international patent).
Meanwhile, this research was carried out with the support of the Samsung Future Technology Promotion Project.
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