February 4, 2011 · A company in Morgantown is using a new type of technology to shorten the time it takes to test tissue samples for proteins.
Officials say it’s a breakthrough for researchers who would only need a few minutes to complete tasks that currently take much longer.
In 2001, Stephen Turner started a company called Protea Biosciences with just a few employees and no office desk to sit in.
Ten years later, the company has grown to 45 employees, nearly all of them West Virginia University graduates.
It sells 100 products to 400 different types of customers.
Turner says he knew his company had this type of potential.
“The thing you keep your eye on is the enormity of the need. Every medical researcher needs to do a better job identifying proteins,” Turner said.
“If you take a tissue sample today, less than 10 percent of the proteins can be identified.”
Protea markets products that are used to study and take samples of cells, and everything in them, including proteins.
Its newest technology is called Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization.
It was invented by a George Washington University professor, and Protea obtained the rights to sell it.
It’s an instrument that analyzes samples of blood and tissue in a matter of a few minutes.
“There are three basic things we’ll do with the instrument. One, we’ll sell the instrument. The second is offering services, for people that can send us their samples, and we can provide databases to them,” Turner said.
“The third is to create our own databases.”
The machine uses a laser to help analyze the samples.
When the laser’s working, it sounds like a ticking clock.
Brent Reschke is a senior scientist at Protea that works with the ionization technology.
He says one interesting aspect of the machine is a built-in cooler.
“It will cool your sample, if you are looking at a tissue sample, it will keep it frozen, or if you just want to try and minimize losses due to evaporation from your sample,” Reschke said.
“It’s a button on the software, we click it, you set your temperature, and then it will control it to whatever temperature you want it.”
Turner hopes with this laser technology, scientists can learn more about proteins and develop drugs that can combat the bad ones.
“Everything that happens biologically in our body happens by way of the protein. They’re doing everything that happens, the good and bad,” Turner said.
“If you add up all the FDA approved drugs on the market, they target a common pool of 600 proteins. 600 out of hundreds of thousands,” he said, “if we can find new targets for development of better drugs, that opens the way for the next generation of drug development.”
Ryan Dunkerley works in Protea’s marketing department and has been with the company for four years.
He’s a native West Virginian and says he’s excited about the work the company does.
“As somebody from West Virginia, it’s heart-filling. We’re creating an industry,” he said.
“It’s a really fulfilling place to be.”
Turner says the Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization technology will make its debut to the public in Atlanta in March.
He says the company’s getting interest from pharmaceutical companies and labs all over the world for the machine.
Turner says the instrument will probably cost $250,000.
This article was originally published on the WV Public Broadcast website. The audio can also be downloaded there.
Posted by Matt Livengood on February 4, 2011 at 3:34 pm in the following categories: Protea Biosciences
