Financiering MZW OZR: Biolayer interferometry to study protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions

Protein-protein interactions (PPI) and protein-ligand interactions (PLI) are central events in all cellular processes required to sustain life. Malfunction of these processes is commonly associated to disease and studying and interfering with PPIs/PLIs is thus a crucial part of nearly every drug development program. Among the various methods to study these interactions, biolayer interferometry (BLI) is a relatively new and particularly powerful and versatile technology. BLI is a label-free analytical technique that does not require intrinsic or extrinsic labeling of the molecules, and which allows to characterize PPIs and PLIs in term of binding affinity and association/dissociation kinetics. Moreover, the ability to perform these experiments in a temperature-controlled and dependent way also allows to determine important thermodynamic parameters that drive the interaction. In this application we request funding for a BLI instrument that allows us to measure at least 8 binding events in parallel with a minimal consumption of precious material and in a temperature-controlled way. For that purpose, we assembled a large consortium of scientists with complementary expertise and from different research groups, faculties and universities, who will use the requested infrastructure to study and tackle a wide range of questions and applications relevant to human health.