Achievement

William Herrick (ICE IGERT trainee, chemical engineering) is working to develop custom protein assays and cost-saving techniques for the Luminex MAGPIX multiplex analyzer in the Peyton lab. This powerful instrument, which allows the measurement of up to 50 different analytes (protein, DNA or RNA) per sample in a 96-well plate, uses a bead-based system similar to sandwich ELISAs. However, beads for many analytes of interest in cancer and heart disease research are not commercially available. Supported by an ICE IGERT Student Training Grant, William visited the Lauffenburger Lab at MIT to receive specialized training on the creation and validation of customized beads. Methods for extending the number of uses of commercial beads and reagents were also extensively discussed. Back at UMass, William is using the custom beads he created at MIT to investigate atherosclerosis, and will disseminate this knowledge to the greater UMass community by co-instructing a lab module in August 2013.