Penn Dental Medicine

Research

Core Facilities » Biacore Facility Core

Biacore units use Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), enabling investigators to detect and monitor biomolecular binding events in real-time. This allows the user to gain a better understanding of biochemical mechanisms associated with protein-ligand interactions. The Penn Dental Medicine Biacore Facility Core features two Biacore units – the Biacore X and the Biacore 3000. The Biacore X is a manually operated unit with two flow cells, and the Biacore 3000 is a fully automated unit with four flow cells and multiple capabilities.

SPR is a valuable research tool to assay components by defining their interactions, providing quantitative information on:

  • Specificity – how specific is the binding between two molecules?
  • Concentration – how much of given molecule is present and active?
  • Kinetics – what is the rate of association/dissociation?
  • Affinity – how strong is the binding?

A special unit installed into the Biacore 3000 is an SPR-MALDI interface block. The block is designed to recover molecules that bind to a protein fixed to the sensor surface in the small volumes that are suitable for mass spectrometry. Bound component(s) are eluted into the micro-recovery module and analyzed by mass spectrometry, which identifies the bound component(s). This has been used to:

  • Characterize native or recombinant protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions.
  • Characterize antibodies by determining competition groups, affinity of binding, and ability to bind to various forms of a protein.
  • Characterize potential drug targets or diagnostic markers.

Contact Information

Dr. Gary Cohen, Director
216 Levy Building
215-898-5914
cohen@biochem.dental.upenn.edu

Penn
The Robert Schattner Center
University of Pennsylvania
School of Dental Medicine
240 South 40th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6030