Platforms for nanopore membrane sensing
Abstract
Our aim is to develop a chip-based platform for the investigation of membrane protein interaction and function. Drug screening has in recent decades suffered both a rapidly increasing cost per successfully developed drug and a decreasing success rate in number of developed drugs. Part of this problem is that drugs increasingly target complex functions manifested by membrane proteins, for which tools both for efficient research and high-throughput screening are missing. More than 50% of all drug targets are located in the cell membrane. We will make use of recent advances in the fabrication of sensors using nanotechnology that enable controlling the assembly of artificial cell membranes, including membrane proteins, so that their interactions with drug molecules can be investigated down to the single protein level. This is possible through collaboration between leading scientists at Brno University of Technology in fabricating nanoscale sensors and at University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, in controlling the molecular assembly of cell membrane components. By creating sensor elements that confine light to volumes corresponding to molecular and cell membrane length scale, we can study how membrane and drug targets change as they interact with drugs and other molecules. By making nanoscale pores in chips we can create stable artificial cell membranes with components from real cells, but investigate them with the most sensitive and information rich biosensors available to researchers, including transport of ions and molecules across the membrane. We aim to reach both fast measurements on many membrane components and measurements sensitive and local enough to study single proteins. A crucial advance that we will make use of to reach these goals is the ability to create brushes of polymers on nanoscale sensor elements that control where membrane molecules bind and move. Membrane proteins that are potential drug targets will be guided to areas where they behave as if in a real cell membrane but are close to a sensor element and can be investigated sensitively and in real time. Thus, the converging sciences of nanobiotechnology allow us to develop methods simultaneously for next generation’s devices for molecular biology research and for drug testing.
keywords lipid nanoplasmonics biosensor self-assembly
Publikationen
Project staff
Erik Reimhult
Univ.Prof. Dr. Erik Reimhult
erik.reimhult@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-80211
Project Leader
01.04.2017 - 31.12.2020
Nikolaus Simon Leitner
Dipl.-Ing. Nikolaus Simon Leitner Bakk.techn.
nikolaus.leitner@boku.ac.at
Project Staff
01.04.2017 - 31.12.2020
BOKU partners
External partners
Brno University of Technlogy
Tomas Sikola
partner