Diagnostics


Protein potential


A team of researchers at QUT in Australia has developed a new approach for designing molecular ON-OFF switches based on proteins, which could eventually lead to a modular diagnostic platform with countless applications. Elly Earls sat down with one of the researchers behind the breakthrough, Professor Kirill Alexandrov of the QUT School of Biology and Environmental Science, to fi nd out how their system works, its potential to scale and why synthetic protein switches for diagnostic applications could just be a precursor to something a lot more exciting.


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here are many examples of point-of-care diagnostic tests, such as blood glucose, pregnancy and Covid-19 tests, which use protein-sensing systems to provide immediate results. But the healthcare industry is only scratching the surface of the potential of protein- based diagnostics, according to Professor Kirill Alexandrov of the QUT School of Biology and Environmental Science, a researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. He is one of the researchers behind a new approach to


diagnostic testing that he and his colleagues hope could eventually lead to a scalable modular test for – well, the sky’s the limit.


Imagine a comprehensive hospital lab, he urges. Almost all the clinical diagnostic tests that are performed there – with the exception of mass spectrometry, which works using ions – are carried out with some involvement of proteins, whether that’s antibodies or various kinds of enzymes. It makes sense, given that proteins are involved in countless important functions that happen in the


Practical Patient Care / www.practical-patient-care.com


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