Identification of Protein-protein Interactions using Magnetic Modulation Biosensing System

The most threatening human diseases humanity is trying to deal with today (like Alzheimer`s disease and cancer) are the result of abnormal protein-protein interactions. Therefore, targeting these interactions is of particular interest in the biomedical field. Unfortunately, current methods to detect protein-protein interactions are either complicated, expensive, providing partial information, time consuming, or not sensitive enough. This research aims to develop a low cost, rapid and high sensitivity method for the detection of interactions between proteins using a magnetic modulation biosensing system. We attach one protein to magnetic beads and the other to fluorescently labeled probes. Only when the proteins interact, a signal is observed. This way we are able to identify known interacting proteins as gold standard, for future use in identification of unknown interactions. We anticipate that the method we are developing will lead to a remarkable advance in drug discovery, medical research and early disease diagnosis.