MASStermind ®
Low abundance protein biomarker discovery
The MASStermind® discovery platform enables the identification and relative quantitation of proteins at the low to sub nanogram per ml level directly from complex biological samples, including clinical plasma and serum. This represents at least a one hundred fold increase in sensitivity and a significant increase in proteome coverage compared with other unbiased discovery methods. Reproducibly quantifying proteins in this concentration range is a prerequisite for the detection of proteins specific to disease or therapeutic intervention. This is supported by a number of in-house studies showing the identification of tissue-leakage, signaling and other proteins directly from clinical and pre-clinical plasma samples.
This impressive performance is achieved through the application of state-of-the-art methods, including Pronota’s core proprietary COFRADIC® technology used in the MASStermind process to reduce sample complexity. COFRADIC® operates by specifically selecting for only the N-terminal tryptic peptide for each protein, whereas all non-terminal fragments are removed from the peptide mixture thereby significantly reducing sample complexity in comparison with other proteomic workflows. This signature peptide selection process is combined with other proprietary methodologies including advanced separation sciences, a novel quantitation methodology, high-end mass spectrometry and sophisticated in-house designed bioinformatics tools. Working together this unique combination of techniques allows Pronota scientists to probe the lower strata of the proteome in a recurrent, reproducible fashion.
Key strengths of the MASStermind® discovery platform:
- Patent protected N-terminal peptide selection, combined with advanced separation technologies allows mining of the low abundance proteome in complex biological samples
- Processing events can be studied and give insight into the formed protease substrates, hence novel cleavage sites
- Use of the unique methodology for relative quantitation enables reliable and reproducible quantitation of disease specific low abundant proteins and is able to detect subtle differences between populations / conditions
- Proprietary bioinformatics tools covering quality control, data mining and statistics
- Extensive experience with plasma and serum, but other proteomes as well, such as CSF, BALF, tissues, cell lysates and secretomes from tissues and cells
- Very well documented and controlled process with a dedicated quality management team