Two research centres in Glasgow and London are building new measurement tools to track protein damage in the body—a key driver of ageing and age-related disease. The problem is that scientists cannot currently detect and measure protein oxidative damage quickly, cheaply, or accurately enough. This technological bottleneck holds back progress in understanding how ageing works at the molecular level and in developing drugs or diagnostics to slow it. The team will use acoustic sound waves, emulsion droplets, and microfluidics to deliver biological samples into mass spectrometers and protein microarrays. They will also build chemical probes that seek out damaged proteins, then incorporate those probes into the new platforms. If the tools work, they could speed up the discovery of drug targets and diagnostic tests for age-related illnesses. The same technology may also benefit the agrochemical industry, since oxidative damage affects crop production. This is a fundamental science programme that builds the analytical infrastructure needed for future medical and industrial breakthroughs.
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New and novel measurement tools and technologies enable modern biological and biomedical research to continue to move forward at a rapid rate. Detecting disease and evaluating the effects of drugs all rely on measurement technologies, and the limitations in our ability to measure things rapidly, accurately and cheaply is often the bottleneck in many research areas. Similarly, advances in industrial processes and clinical methods are often dependent on matching advances in measurement technology. In this programme two leading research centres from Glasgow University and Imperial College London join forces to develop new techniques and tools in order to improve existing approaches to detect and quantify the effects of protein oxidative damage in biological samples. Protein oxidative damage is one of the components of ageing and can cause a range of serious medical problems. As part of this project we will improve the ways in which biological samples are delivered into a range of analytical platforms such as mass spectroscopy and protein microarrays by employing novel innovative approaches such as acoustic sound waves, emulsion droplets and microfludics. Chemical tools and probes that seek out and detect damaged proteins will be constructed and subsequently incorporated into the technologies mentioned above. These technologies will be used to study the dynamics of protein damage in space and time. Another part of the programme develops high throughput analysis tools of various forms all of which use minaturisation methods to allow for the analysis of as many proteins as possible, as rapidly as possible and with as much detail as possible. It is anticipated that this multidisciplinary programme will create the necessary analytical platforms to overcome a technological gap that is holding back biological and medical discoveries in this research area that is vital for fostering our understanding of human health and ageing. It also has the potential to facilitate medical interventions to alleviate the symptoms of ageing and age-related illness. Given the importance of these issues for the general population, not just of the UK but worldwide, the impact of this programme will be significant and sustained for several years in terms of academic output as well as industrial wealth generation. In particular, novel drug targets and indeed drugs, as well as improved diagnostic techniques to monitor and assess human health and ageing are possible outcomes in the near future. Given the importance of oxidative damage in crop production it is likely that our programme will also produce tools that benefit the agrochemical industry, making this proposal a truly discipline crossing venture with respect to the sciences involved and the impact generated.
Andrew De Mello (Co-Investigator)Andrew Pitt (Co-Investigator)Corinne Spickett (Co-Investigator)David Klug (Principal Investigator)Jonathan Cooper (Co-Investigator)Keith Willison (Co-Investigator)Mark Neil (Co-Investigator)Nicholas Morrice (Co-Investigator)Oscar Ces (Co-Investigator)Pat Langridge-Smith (Co-Investigator)Ramon Vilar Compte (Co-Investigator)Robin Leatherbarrow (Co-Investigator)Rudiger Woscholski (Co-Investigator)
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