PROTEMIC · Integrated Spectroscopy for Protein Analysis Using Metasurfaces and Interband/Quantum Cascade Devices

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of life and are complex biopolymers. The pharmaceutical industry and medicine have an unmet requirement for dynamic, insitu monitoring of structural changes of proteins. Proteins may incorrectly fold during the expression process, or denature in response to changes in temperature, pH amongst others. These deviations lead to loss of function, loss of therapeutic effectiveness, increased immunogenicity or reduced product shelf life. For example, growing amounts of human milk are donated to serve the needs of pre-term infants but there is a lack of quality control to monitor protein quality during pasteurisation and storage. Current analysis techniques require extracting samples from the reaction vessel, which risks contamination, or use indirect measurements of the protein structure.PROTEMIC is a Double Doctorate Training Network that brings together the disciplines of Physics, Analytical Chemistry and Biochemistry to determine the protein structure from the sample’s Mid Infrared absorption spectrum without the use of labels or reagents. PROTEMIC builds on the team’s experiences with the successful OPTAPHI joint doctoral network and embeds the Doctoral Candidates into multiple disciplines to gain skills that cannot be obtained from a single host, and master biochemistry and spectroscopy. The project builds and expands on breakthroughs recently made in the OPTAPHI project, for example new photonic integrated circuits and world first photothermal spectroscopy results. PROTEMIC embeds metasurface and photonic integrated circuits into the reaction vessel to provide insitu mid IR spectroscopy for the first time and map structural changes during dynamic reactions in realtime. These results will improve the efficiency of the production of protein based pharmaceuticals and through the use of metasurface microtitre plates, allow the scalable screening of proteins for the encapsulation of oral vaccines, accelerating drug discovery.