Biological Sciences

One active area of development for the biochemists at the Merck Frosst Centre for Therapeutic Research is proteomics, an alternative and complementary approach to genomics, based on the recognition that most disease processes and treatments are manifested at the protein, rather than gene, level. Gene-based expression analysis alone may be totally inadequate for the identification of drug targets. Proteomics can readily identify potential drugs or targets by, for instance, comparing reference protein profiles in normal or disease states with profiles after exposure to the candidate molecule. Biochemists at Merck Frosst are developing proteomics applications for several research groups, using a combination of two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2-DE) technology linked to mass spectrometry to identify or validate disease markers that correlate statistically with potential treatments. In the phosphatase research program, for example, proteomics is employed to elucidate the role of putative drugs in the insulin transduction pathway, in the hope of a new treatment for diabetes.
      

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To see an animation of a series of gels regarding this phenomenon, click here (caution: the file is a 2.3 Mb animated-GIF, so it might take a while to download!).