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In Cell IT (In Cell Interation Trap)
InCell IT provides a way to monitor interactions between drug molecule and target proteins in live human cells. Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) coated with small molecule drugs are delivered into human cells with fluorescent tagged proteins expressed prior to the delivery. When the MNPs are delivered into cells, the drug molecules on the surface of MNP will bind to its interacting targets. An external magnetic field is applied to give a significant pattern in the cell which would appear as fluorescent signals when observed with a fluorescent microscope. On the contrary, if the drug does not bind to the target prepared with a fluorescent tag attached, the pattern will not give any fluorescent signal.
There are many different in vitro technology that can do target identification. For conventional in vitro assays (inhibition assays, affinity purification etc.), target protein has to be prepared in buffer solution, in modified forms, such as purified, truncated, or surrogated forms. We assume that such protein in buffer solution can represent the native protein, but it is not true. The native protein is a part of the complex cell context, and isolated, modified protein does not represent the native state. This is one of the reasons why in vitro assay results sometimes do not correlate to in vivo results. InCell IT monitors drug-target interaction is human cell, so the biomolecules are exposed to the environment closer to that of the human body. Another advantage of InCell IT is that it directly visualizes the binding of drug molecule and target protein. Conventional technology has to employ a third component to detect the function of the protein, which would imply the binding of the protein, for example reporter gene. In such case, functionality of the reporter gene can also play a role in the result therefore false positive or negative data can be given. InCell IT can provide REAL binding in AUTHENTIC environment.
- Target ID - in vitro ADME/T - Indication Discovery - Drug Repositioning
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