Researchers develop a protein thermal shift chip for COVID-19

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 26 2022

Announcing a new publication for Acta Materia Medica journal. Traditional protein chips are based on solid chips and cannot enable drug and target screening in a label-free manner.

This article proposes a protein thermal shift chip (PTSC) based on fluorescence signals which enables low-cost, high-throughput, label-free screening.

The authors of this article developed a PTSC for COVID-19, containing 12 SARS-CoV-2 and host target proteins. A series of quality-control tests were performed for small-molecule drugs, macromolecular antibodies, and herbal-medicine extracts. This chip enabled high-throughput screening of COVID-19 drugs and thus may serve as a tool for screening drug targets clinically effective drugs.