SBIR Phase II: High-Throughput In-Situ Crystallography Screening System

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to develop a high throughput crystallography screening system aimed at accelerating and automating crystal growth for structural studies. X-ray crystallography is the primary method for determining the molecular structure of biological macromolecules, including proteins and nucleic acids. Yet, although crystals are an ideal material for analyzing the structure of solids, growing crystals of sufficient quality for diffraction studies has heretofore been a tedious and labor-intensive undertaking. Thus, the development of a platform that allows automation, miniaturization and parallelization for obtaining crystals of optimal quality would be a significant step forward in crystallography and would accelerate structural studies. An improvement in this area would therefore be of interest not only to academic scientists engaged in structural studies, but also to pharmaceutical researchers who are interested in the structural relationship of drugs and their targets.