SPOC Proteomics, Inc, a deep-tech life sciences company based out of Scottsdale Arizona (HQ) and Menlo Park California, announced the commercial launch of their customizable sensor-integrated proteome on chip (SPOC®) biosensors for limited beta testing at SLAS2024. This comes following the company’s unveiling of plans for SPOC protein-biosensor chip catalog products at the Precision Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley from Jan 24-26, 2024.
SPOC Proteomics technology has been selected as a 1 of 9 finalists for the Innovation Award and also as 1 of 16 Innovation AveNEW companies at SLAS2024 in Boston, MA from Feb 3-7.
At SLAS2024, SPOC Proteomics is announcing the launch of customizable SPOC protein biosensor chips tailored to individual customer needs. This announcement comes shortly after the recent release of their first pre-print publication on bioRxiv.
With tens of thousands of proteins, hundreds of thousands of protein isoforms in human biology, millions of post-translational modified (PTM) functional proteins and innumerable mutational variants, studying binding interactions of proteins and the resultant functionality calls for development of high throughput screening tools. Dr. Bharath Takulapalli the company’s CEO noted “there is more to proteomics than sequencing information, qualitative and quantitative binding information that can be gained from mass-spectrometry tools, fluorescence profiling and sequencing tools. Majority of protein interactions and functions are governed by protein interactions with other proteins, DNA, RNA, metabolites, drugs, other biomolecules, which essentially are all equilibrium reactions with specific kinetic parameters - rate of association (ka), rate of dissociation (kd), dissociation half-life t1/2, affinity (KD), avidity etc.”
Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been the gold standard for biopharma industry for kinetic screening of protein interactions, to measure on-target and off-target binding of drug molecules, assess breadth of lead drug molecules’ binding to mutational target variants, and for mechanistic studies. A major impediment to high throughput kinetic screening of proteins has been the expensive and time-consuming recombinant protein workflows. Commercial sourcing of prior-expressed and purified recombinant proteins can cost $250 – 500 per protein, rendering kinetic study of 100s to 1000s of proteins cost-prohibitive. SPOC Proteomics’ novel SPOC platform was developed to address this challenge and democratize kinetic and functional screening of protein binding interactions.
SPOC technology uniquely provides real-time, label-free biosensing of up to 1000 full length folded proteins on a single 1.5 cm2 SPR chip. SPOC utilizes a proprietary method which enables direct-from DNA protein production in nano-liter volume wells, with simultaneous capture-purification of protein spots onto the SPR biosensor surface. This production method circumvents the entire recombinant protein production pipeline, offering users 10-100x reduction in costs compared to traditional workflows. SPOC protein biosensor chips are the first and only platform capable of providing qualitative, quantitative, and kinetic data at scale, for high-throughput proteomic research needs. Dr. Chidozie Agu, first author of the pre-print paper on bioRxiv and SPOC Proteomics Manager of Bioassay Development added “what began more than half a decade ago as a moderate but ambitious vision to inexpensively array few hundred proteins on a small sensor surface for kinetics has surpassed initial target by tenfold. As they say, faith does not make things easy, it makes them possible.” State-of-the-art high throughput screening tools use end-point fluorescent assays which often miss transient protein interactions and high-dissociation-rate drug bindings to secondary undesired targets, that may lead to failures during clinical trials.
Dr. Takulapalli added “Artificial Intelligence (AI) designed drug development has taken off in a big way, boosting the drug discovery pipelines of biotech and pharma companies. SPOC is an elegant platform for rapid testing, validation and iterative improvement of AI-designed drug candidates. Additionally, SPOC can aid in characterization and monitoring of humoral response post inoculation or infection, to aid vaccine development efforts.” With broad areas of applications, SPOC Proteomics is initially pursuing partnerships and pilot studies in biomarker discovery, pre-clinical drug development, artificial intelligence (AI)-designed drug and therapeutic characterization, vaccine efficacy evaluation, and infectious disease diagnostics, with planned expansion to additional research areas.
Interested beta testers are requested to reach out to SPOC Proteomics team at [email protected] to enquire about pilot study opportunities.