Detection and quantification of organ toxicity biomarkers

In recent years, the interest given to disease biomarkers has boomed. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are exploring ways to use biomarkers to speed up the drug development process, as well as to rapidly assess diseases state, staging, progression and response to therapy. Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) Mass Spectrometry (MS) has been shown to be well suited for the selective and sensitive quantification of proteins in plasma and has recently emerged as the technology of choice for disease biomarker study. The focus of this research project is to develop a highly multiplexed MRM assay to quantitatively measure changes in organ-specific toxicity biomarkers and test their predictive value following drug-induced organ injury in rats. More specifically, this assay will be used to detect and quantify protein biomarkers associated with various organ toxicities such as hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, cardiotoxicity as well as muscle, vascular and neurotoxicity in the rat urine and plasma. The internship will be very beneficial to Caprion Proteomics, the partner organization, as the developed method will be implemented into their existing MRM service platform and offered to pharmaceutical clients that wish to evaluate compound toxicity at the drug discovery pre-clinical phase.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Pierre Thibault

Student:

Marlene Gharib

Partner:

Caprion Biosciences

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Université de Montréal