Joshua LaBaer from Arizona State University and Jonine Figueroa from National Cancer Institute have collaborated to apply NAPPA (Nucleic acid programmable protein array) technology to detect new autoantibody biomarkers for different cancers. NAPPA approach involves printing cDNA clones of known genes on an array slide. These cDNA clones are custom added an epitope tag at the C-terminus. An hour or two before the exposure of this slide to any patient sample for analysis, the slide in dipped in an expression extract to trigger in situ transcription and translation on the slide. The proteins thus synthesized are recognized by any autoantibodies in patient serum, suggesting what autoantibodies are being expressed in the patient; which can then be used as biomarkers of the cancer type.
This is a cool Technology. Thanks for posting Arun.
ReplyDeleteSo these are different from the regular antibody arrays right!!
ReplyDeleteI'm a plant scientist and I've conducted many microarray experiments in maize. It is very nice to see this technology being applied to humans, especially since the human gemone sequence has been completed. Very interesting!!
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