I-Corps: DNA-based kinase activity detection platform

The broader impact of this I-Corps project is to improve patient outcomes, lower healthcare costs, aid pharmaceutical scientists in the development of new therapies, and support ongoing efforts to elucidate kinase mechanisms of action. Kinase enzymes are involved in the metabolism of glucose(sugar) in the body. Currently available kinase activity assay systems lack high sensitivity, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to make measurements in a complex media precisely and accurately.

Overdiagnosis and overtreatment of disease is a critical problem that causes many patients to endure unnecessary side effects, such as infections from biopsies and high healthcare costs. The proposed approach may offer a critically needed innovation that will overcome multiple barriers facing existing kinase assays and better equip clinicians and pharmaceutical scientists in the treatment and development of next generation therapies.

This I-Corps project will address drawbacks of current kinase activity assays. The goal of this project is to develop highly sensitive and multiplexed kinase assays using an innovative DNA-based protein activity detection system. DNA-based activity assays display multiple advantages over current assays, including cost effectiveness, multiplexing ability, high sensitivity, and specificity.

This assay will be 10- to 100-fold cheaper than current assays due to the low cost of DNA synthesis. The proposed approach enables the detection of protein activities as low as 100 femtomolar (fM) in proteins in clinically-relevant biological samples. Ultimately, this innovative DNA-based kinase assay platform will address the limitations facing current kinase assay systems with a new solution that offers high specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy in terms of disease diagnostics and/or monitoring the kinase targeted drug responsiveness of various cancers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.