Preferential Display (PD) based PROTECT system

Exposure of humans to chemical or biological warfare agents has been demonstrate to be detected within hours of contact by measuring gene expression levels (profiles) on a genomic scale using microarray chips. While this technology has been shown to bedeployable in the field, the human genomics databases are insufficient to diagnose which chemical or pathogen a person has been exposed to.GeneXpress Informatics, Inc. (GXI) and Dr. J.P.,Chambers of University of Texas at San Antonio propose to develop a differential gene display technology, called Preferential Display (PD), which will provide a simplified, cost-effective and efficientmethod to identify induced transcripts associated with military personnel exposure to chemical or biological warfare agents. By identifying these chemical/biowarfare agent induced transcripts, GXI intends to provide an unprecedented number of leadsequences for DNA microarray monitoring applications. In Phase I, GXI and Dr. Chambers proposes isolate and identify a preliminary set of gene sequences from a cell line which have been challenged by a chemical or biowarfare agent. The Phase II programwill result in a fully automated PROTECT system for use in identifying and isolating biosignataure sequence databases from human test subjects. The PD technology offers a revolutionary technology to isolate and identify gene expression profiles of diseased versus normal tissues for use in developing microarray chips for medical diagnosis and monitoring of infectious diseases. The databasesgenerated will have a wide commercial market as new drugs or drug targets.