ABBBA: AFFINITY-BASED BACTERIAL BIOMARKER ASSAY

Early disease diagnosis still represents one of the most crucial issues in modern medicine. Despite great advances in high-throughput technologies and the discovery of several hundred new disease biomarkers, we are currently still unable to detect diseases specifically and sensitively when they are most vulnerable, at the beginning. We want to develop a transferable, biological detection system for different diseases using HER-2, a breast cancer biomarker, for a proof-of-prinicple. Therefore, we created a novel class of chimeric receptors based on the bacterial osmoregulator EnvZ. We substituted a part of the periplasmic domain of EnvZ with an exchangable, but highly-specific protein binder, an Affibody molecule. Upon antigen binding, the receptor would trigger the OmpR signaling cascade leading to the production of quorum sensing molecules, which activate transcription of a fluorescent signal in a separated read-out strain. Taken together, this system could be a transferable method for biomarker detections.

Awards

Gold medal
Nomination for Best Health and Medicine Project