Autoantibody Discovery Using a Novel Microarray of Functional Proteins

Recombinant protein expression is a fundamental technique that underpins clinical diagnostics, drug discovery and screening, vaccine development and pure research for elucidating mechanisms of disease development and progression. However, high-throughput production of correctly folded and functional, full-length human proteins has a very high failure rate. Protein folding is a highly complex process requiring a combination of an aqueous environment, chaperones, post-translational modifications and the formation of multimeric structures held together by covalent bonds. Any deviation from the correct sequence of events can result in a misfolded protein. Loss of protein function is directly linked to misfolding. Use of misfolded proteins in downstream assays and interactions studies can result in identification of false positive biomarkers.