New retrieval method makes studying cancer proteins easier

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By Brian Wallheimer
July 6, 2010

A Purdue University researcher can better retrieve specific proteins needed to study how cancer cells form by using a newly developed technique and synthetic nanopolymer.

W. Andy Tao, an assistant professor of biochemistry, said these specific proteins, called phosphoproteins, can be mapped and analyzed so that we can find ways to inhibit the processes that lead to cancer. But first those few proteins must be fished out of a sea of thousands of others. 

  Tao developed and patented the polymer-based metal-ion affinity capture, or PolyMAC. The synthetic nanopolymer isolates proteins and peptides that have undergone a process called phosphorylation that is highly associated with cancer, and a patented technique allows Tao to retrieve those proteins. Obtaining the information on these proteins is important for studying how to inhibit the processes that lead to cancer.

  "You really want to capture these particular proteins, but there are so many different types of proteins around them," said Tao, whose findings were published in the early online version of the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. "The target proteins are a thousand times lower in amount than other proteins. They are difficult to study without the capturing step." 

  Normal cells grow, divide and eventually die. But cancer cells continue to grow and do not die. Tao said phosphorylation - in which a type of enzyme called a kinase attaches to and catalyzes a protein on a cell - is thought in many cases to be responsible for creating cancer cells.

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