Jess Breaks New Quantitative Ground in New Chemical Entity Screening at TCG Lifesciences
"The quantitative assays and short run times on Jess enable us to generate data faster and be more confident in our results."
- Tonmoy Sarkar, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, TCG Lifesciences
ON THE HUNT FOR PAIN BIOMARKERS IN THERAPEUTICS RESEARCH
TCG Lifesciences (TCGLS) is a drug discovery CRO involved in pre-clinical research with services spanning chemistry, in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, analytical development and validation, and specialty chemicals. They specialize in specific/functional solutions to integrated projects in the therapeutic areas of inflammation and pain, infectious diseases, central nervous system and oncology.
Dr. Tonmoy Sarkar is a Senior Research Scientist in the In-vitro Pharmacology group, with a core focus in oncology and pain. In his research, he uses different cell-free and cell-based assays to screen for new chemical entities (NCEs). He’s currently investigating the expression and modulation of different biomarkers in different cell systems, and modulation of activity for different drug targets.
QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS PLUS EXTRA THROUGHPUT IN A SNAP
Prior to putting Jess and Simple Western assays to work on his projects, Tonmoy had been using traditional Western blots. But they were pretty limiting when it came to quantification of protein content and sample throughput in the lab.
Tonmoy now uses Jess to quantify proteins in anything from cell nuclei and cell membranes, to cytosolic proteins from cell lines, to proteins in primary tissues. And he’s finishing experiments in 4 hours, which means he processes more samples in a single day than he ever could before. Jess’s automated sample loading and antibody multiplexing really facilitates target detection in his experiments, and being able to run a total protein assay in the same capillary as his sample gives him extra confidence in the data. When the time comes for Tonmoy to hand off a method he has developed, Simple Western assays are easily transferable to Jess systems in client labs - so they can be up and running in no time.
DATA CONFIDENCE AT A WHOLE NEW LEVEL
Having a quantitative method for protein analysis that takes all the manual work off Tonmoy’s plate makes life much easier in the lab, and he’s much more confident in the data they’re generating for client drug targets. Because the In-vitro Pharmacology group at TCGLS has been so impressed with Jess, they’ve now got her running experiments to expand their capability to support drug discovery using new targeted protein degradation approaches.