Photoaptamers as Capture Reagents for Biological Agents

Antibodies are the prototypical capture reagent for biological agents (proteins and pathogens). However, despite their advantages, antibodies also have significant disadvantages with respect to shelf life, production reproducibility and, less importantly, cost. Alternative receptor scaffolds, such as nucleic acid-based photoaptamers, offer similar performance characteristics to antibodies but without the attendant drawbacks that are common to protein-based capture reagents. Furthermore, photoaptamers can detect their targets at concentrations in the low femtomolar range. SomaLogic, Inc. can design and build a simple, user-friendly, inexpensive laboratory-based analytical system that has, as its cornerstone, a photoaptamer microarray that can capture with high specificity and sensitivity the targets of interest. It will incorporate elution buffers that can be used to elute the proteins and / or pathogens of interest off of standard air filters, water filters, swabs, swipes or other sample collection devices and the necessary laboratory equipment, reagents and SOPs required for sample analysis. It will utilize standard analytical laboratory fluid handling systems for chip processing, and a standard microarray fluorescent chip reader for protein and /or pathogen detection. Finally, the entire analytical system could be assembled using existing technology within a 2-3 year time horizon. The specific objectives of this Phase I project are: Technical Objective #1: Demonstrate functional utility of photoaptamer arrays: dynamic range and limits of detection. Technical Objective #2: Demonstrate superiority of photoaptamers to antibodies with respect to thermal and chemical stability. Technical Objective #3: Demonstrate the ability to optimize specificity and affinity of our photoaptamer arrays for at least one protein target relative to other closely related proteins.