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A new protein extraction method developed at Porto Conte Ricerche

Protein extraction 
23.10.2009
Porto Conte Ricerche research centre has developed a reliable, efficient, and versatile extraction method of full-length proteins from FFPE tissues. The new method has also been tested for suitability to different analytical platforms, such as SDS-PAGE, 2-D PAGE, 2D-DIGE, western blotting, ELISA, protein arrays, and mass spectrometry identification.

The implications of the discovery of this new method are noteworthy under several aspects. Extraction of proteins entangled within the formalin-induced crosslinks has always been extremely difficult. Proteins extracted with the past methodologies were not suitable for analysis with proteomic techniques based on electrophoretic separation, immunoblotting, ELISA, and mass spectrometry.

With the application of the extraction method developed by the Proteomic Lab research team at Porto Conte Ricerche, the proteins trapped inside FFPE tissue biopsies can now be extracted and studied with advanced analytic procedures.

The ability to access a large number of patient samples, and to link them to the information contained in medical records, will hopefully give valuable insights for improving diagnosis and therapy. Proteomic profiling of immunohistochemistry diagnosis "leftovers" will open the way to statistically supported studies on low-incidence diseases, such as rare tumour forms.

In addition, the extremely stable nature and biological safety of FFPE tissues will greatly facilitate long distance exchange of samples for performing multicentric studies.

In the future, the enlargement of statistic databases allowed by access to the proteomic information contained in FFPE tissues will give more robustness and trustworthiness to biomarker discovery and validation studies.

The research already led to the patent application "Procedure for extraction of proteins from biological FFPE tissue samples" and to the publication of scientific articles on prestigious peer reviewed journals (Addis MF et al. 2009, Proteomics 9:3815-23 and Addis MF et al. 2009, Proteomics 9:4329-39).

Contacts
Research and development Department
Indirizzo emailricerca@portocontericerche.it
Porto Conte Ricerche srl
S.P. 55 Porto Conte-Capo Caccia, Km 8.400
C.P. S.M. La Palma
07041 Alghero (SS) - Italy
Phone +39 079 998.400
Fax +39 079 998.567