Assistant professor John Easley and professor Curtis Shannon, with the department of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Science and Mathematics, successfully led a collaborative effort between their research teams, the Easley Research Group and Shannon Research Group, to develop a new disease-detection method referred to as the electrochemical proximity assay, or ECPA.
The Easley Research Group is focused on making an impact on the understanding of the fundamentals of diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome by developing methods to measure hormone release from a small number of cells in a short time frame.
"We are trying to develop methods that can make those types of measurements and help out some of the people who study more fundamental lab biology," Easley said. "We want to help them out, and maybe even do some of the measurements ourselves."
The ECPA is one of those methods the groups worked to develop.
"We were developing a method to detect the proteins we were looking for, but then we realized that it can actually detect many other ones," Easley said. "Your body has hundreds of thousands of different proteins, and native protein is one of the main components of your body. It's simply detecting proteins."
The Easley Research Group detects proteins by using chemical methods to attach DNA to antibodies, which are also proteins. These antibodies can specifically recognize certain proteins.
"We get the ones that we need for that particular protein, and then we attach DNA to those and we can get the DNA design anyway we want," Easley said.
The DNA is used to tell us if the protein is there and acts as a signal.
"We can get it to bind only if the protein is there," Easley said.
Easley's proximity assay work and Shannon's work on electroanalytical chemistry led to the realization of collaboration.
"We combined our methods with Dr. Shannon's electrochemical methods, and it turned out to work way better than all the other techniques," Easley said. "There are many different things that you can detect by having a method that could quantify proteins."
This technology also has the potential for commercialization because of its wide range of detection abilities and because of the electro-chemistry aspect, which allows it to be miniaturized into an electric circuit.
Auburn University applied for a patent in 2012, and Easley and Shannon are continuing their work on the ECPA.
"Working with Dr. Shannon has been very fruitful and were going to continue working," Easley said.
"The next steps for the ECPA include prototyping a handheld device, miniaturization of the sensor components, optimizing the measurement parameters and detecting multiple proteins at the same time," Shannon said.
The National Science Foundation and other organizations fund this research that the professors do.
Auburn's Office of the Vice President for Research also supported the development of the ECPA as Easley, Shannon and engineers work with the Office of Technology Transfer to conduct more studies.
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