Making Oligonucleotides Better Biopharmaceuticals by Steric Protection

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $127,559 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract The goal of this instrument supplement application is to boost our productivity through the purchase of a DNA synthesis and purification system. Our goal in the original application is to study a novel antisense oligonucleotide platform in vitro and in vivo for potential therapeutic applications, which requires relatively large amounts of the nucleic acid material (on the order of hundreds of milligrams per study). However, our current setup only produces several milligrams (<10 mg) per synthesis. As such, our in vivo studies must be carefully designed to minimize the usage of materials, and even so, 2-3 months are needed to accumulate sufficient materials for a single study. The proposed DNA synthesizer/purification system will be able to shorten the synthesis to one week, thereby freeing students/postdocs from the labor-intensive work of sample preparation and allowing them to focus on studying the samples in biological systems. The requested funds will be used to purchase the DNA synthesizer (GE Oligopilot 10), while Northeastern University and the PI will contribute funds to purchase the accompanying purification system (GE AKTA Pure 150). The pair of instruments will be purchased, installed, and fully operational as soon as funding becomes available.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10134609
Project number
3R01GM121612-03S1
Recipient
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator
Ke Zhang
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
$127,559
Award type
3
Project period
2017-09-01 → 2022-08-31