(Image courtesy of Imapact Proteomics)
What do you do when you are working on the forefront of biological discovery and you no longer have the analytical tools you need? If you're Jonathan Minden, you invent them. And then you create a company to sell those solutions to others.
I recently had the opportunity to visit with Professor Jonathan Minden (Founder) from Carnegie Mellon University and Jeff Whitmore (CEO) from Impact Proteomics about their mission to improve proteomics and multiomics analysis.
Origins
The story of Impact Proteomics begins long before the creation of the company. It goes back to the days when Dr. Minden was a researcher working on fruit fly embryology. To accomplish his research, he needed better fluorescent compounds and proteomics tools. Through his research, he was able to discover fluorescent compounds that accelerated his discoveries. Recognizing the benefit of these products to other researchers, he was eventually able to sell the rights to these compounds to Amersham (now owned by Cytiva).
Meanwhile, Dr. Minden was witnessing the benefit that companies like Qiagen provided to researchers working on nucleic acid analysis. Ever the innovator, Dr. Minden realized that such tools for proteomics would be similarly beneficial to researchers. Ultimately, Dr. Minden developed enough tools to spin out commercialized proteomics solutions. Thus, in December 2017, Dr. Minden co-founded Impact Proteomics along with former student Amber Lucas as the first CEO.
Central to Impact Proteomics’ approach is the ProMTag, an innovative reagent designed to streamline and enhance protein capture processes. This proprietary technology forms the cornerstone of the company's immunoprecipitation coupled to mass spectrometry (IP-to-MS) antigen discovery platform as well as other proteomics and multiomics workflows.
The ProMTag Breakthrough
How does the ProMTag work? As a bifunctional crosslinker with a PEG spacer, the ProMTag has one end that can specifically bind to agarose beads. The other end can reversibly bind to lysine residues on a protein. The ProMTag can be used in a variety of workflows to reversibly bind proteins to agarose beads enabling a simplified purification process.
This protein binding of the ProMTag has several advantages. First, due to the covalent nature of the bond, harsh washing conditions can be employed to purify captured proteins. They can then be gently released intact or digested directly on the beads using trypsin. This approach yields clean peptides, suitable for mass spectrometry analysis.
Moreover, the high specificity of the ProMTag minimizes non-specific binding, resulting in cleaner and more reliable protein samples. These attributes are paramount for obtaining accurate and meaningful data from subsequent analyses. Additionally, the binding to lysine enables ProMTag to work universally across all proteins with an unbiased binding behavior.
The ProMTag becomes a central player in workflows like Impact Proteomics' IP-to-MS platform. By enabling the comprehensive, unbiased identification of proteins that bind to antibodies, this technology offers invaluable insights into immunology and other complex biological processes. For instance, in the realm of autoimmune disease, the ability to uncover novel autoantigens through IP-to-MS has the potential to redefine diagnostic approaches, leading to earlier detection and more effective treatment strategies.
Other methods for proteomics analysis and multiomics (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and metabolites) rely on the ProMTag to create simplified workflows for researchers.
(Impact Proteomics kits, image courtesy of Impact Proteomics)
Addressing the Challenges of Proteomics
While the ProMTag and IP-to-MS platform showcase immense promise, there are still challenges on the path to commercialization and widespread adoption. Like many startups, Impact Proteomics is working to increase awareness among potential customers and convince them to adopt the new workflows over traditional sample preparation and antigen/antibody discovery schemes.
The concept of unbiased antigen discovery in immunology is a promising path, but somewhat bucks the traditional methods. Researchers are used to targeting specific protein compounds when studying immune disease. The Impact Proteomics workflow is designed to be unbiased in detection of any protein that binds to the autoantibody.
This leads to the next challenge of Impact Proteomics, which is how to handle the computational complexity and data richness of unbiased antigen discovery. Generating vast datasets from IP-to-MS experiments necessitates sophisticated bioinformatics tools and expertise. Impact Proteomics is actively developing advanced data analysis pipelines to extract meaningful insights from these complex datasets, empowering researchers to derive actionable knowledge from their experiments.
Gaining regulatory approval for diagnostic applications of the IP-to-MS platform is another formidable challenge. Demonstrating the clinical utility of the technology and navigating the complex regulatory landscape will be crucial for the successful translation of research findings into clinical practice.
A Vision for the Future
To overcome these challenges and realize the full potential of its technology, Impact Proteomics has adopted a multifaceted strategy. The company is actively seeking strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and research organizations to accelerate product development, expand market reach, and facilitate clinical validation studies. Additionally, Impact Proteomics is committed to building a strong intellectual property portfolio to protect its innovative technologies and ensure long-term growth.
By investing in talent development, cutting-edge research, and state-of-the-art infrastructure, Impact Proteomics aims to establish itself as a global leader in the field of protein and self-antigen analysis. The company's long-term vision encompasses the development of a comprehensive suite of products and services that address the evolving needs of researchers and clinicians across diverse disease disciplines. CEO Jeff Whitmore looks forward to opportunities to partner with pharmaceutical companies and others to introduce the technology and incorporate market feedback. He sees this as a logical precursor to in-licensing the technology to drug developers before the company eventually moves to clinical diagnostics.
Professor Minden has a 'blue sky' view for the future of Impact Proteomics. He envisages a day when, at an annual checkup, an individual will have their blood screened by IP-to-MS to see what their immune system is fighting. This will enable the early detection of self-antigens that can lead to autoimmune conditions or cancer, enabling diagnosis and treatment at the beginning stages of disease.
Whatever the future holds, Impact Proteomics is confident that the ProMTag is a useful tool for proteomic analysis today. The ProMTag-powered technologies that Minden developed to solve his own research questions are now available to any researcher around the world.
To learn more about Impact Proteomics and their workflows, visit www.impactproteomics.com.
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