PROTOCLIN · IMPROVEMENT OF TOOLS AND PORTABILITY OF MASS SPECTROMETRY-BASED CLINICAL PROTEOMICS AS APPLIED TO CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE

The number of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasing steadily due to extended life expectancy, long lasting diabetes and obesity. Early unambiguous detection of patients at risk is both a clinical and scientific challenge. Capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry (CE-MS), developed by Mosaiques Diagnostics (MD, SME, Germany), has been shown to be an excellent tool for the discovery and validation of urinary biomarkers of CKD. The aim of this project is to advance CE-MS technology in biomarker discovery and direct clinical applications alike through a) establishing the appropriate tools for its portability and b) through its combination with MALDI TOF MS, as a pre-CE-MS high throughput screening tool, in the form of an integrated MS diagnostic platform. Participating partners are highly complementary: the research intensive participating SME (MD) being the inventor of and expert on CE-MS, BRFAA bringing expertise on MALDI TOF MS profiling and Inserm having extensively collaborated with MD and recently acquired CE-MS being an excellent b-site for the development of tools for CE-MS portability. The exchange and recruitment program has been designed so as to allow flow of scientific knowledge between industry and academia and training of early to late stage researchers in cutting edge biomarker discovery techniques. Multiple immediate and long term benefits for all participating parties are expected including higher efficiency in their current and expansion of their research activities and increase in competitiveness. Among the long term benefits will be the durable implementation of the CE-MS technology and the development of a non-invasive high-throughput screening tool for CKD.