Warwick Student’s Research Makes Cancer Test 1000x More Detailed

The thesis project of a University of Warwick undergraduate, Hayley Simon, has led to the development of a test which can identify cancer and diabetes biomarkers 1000x more detailed and 100% faster than the methods currently in use.

The O’Connor Research Group at the University of Warwick was at the forefront of this research as the group discovered that a large protein called collagen can be analysed in far greater detail when using 2D Mass Spectrometry (2DMS), a new method used in Proteomics, the large-scale study of the structure and function of proteins.

For her thesis, chemistry student Hayley Simon aimed to find all the known crosslinks in collagen. This type of study would require separating and sequencing more than 400 peptide ions which would usually mean running many different experiments.

Using 2DMS meant that in just one experiment Simon was able to collect information about everything observed in one collagen sample.

She explained: “After processing, the results are presented as a single spectrum, allowing patterns to be easily recognised. This helps identify components in the sample, which in turn can be used to determine structural information about the protein.”

Researchers believe that the same test can be used with any protein-based sample; this includes protein and cells related to cancer and Type II diabetes.

Professor Peter O’Connor of the department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick and leader of the O’Connor Research Group explained that cancer cells are comprised of millions of peptides each which contain the proteins which allow the cells to carry out their various functions.

2DMS permits researchers to study these peptides and proteins in far more detail than when using other research techniques and, as Professor O’Connor observes, “Understanding the structure and chemistry of all peptides and proteins will enable ground-breaking treatments to be developed”.

Professor O’Connor explained that “the 2DMS method modulates ion signal intensities in a way which carries over into fragment ion signals, and therefore allows the researchers to correlate individual fragment ion signals with their precursor ion – effectively allowing sequencing of each molecule in the sample simultaneously.”

This is exceedingly efficient considering whole cells are comprised of tens of thousands of peptide signals and to isolate each one separately would take a huge amount of time.

Instead, using 2DMS, the cells components are fragmented simultaneously but then the information can be separated into individual scans.

Therefore, using multidimensional mass spectrometry allows the development of data 1000x more detailed than was previously possible when using mass spectrometry.