SYNALGIA – Coupling of microfluidic lab-on-chip to ion-mobility mass spectrometry for Parkinson disease biomarker validation

The recent years have seen a rise of evidences interconnecting protein unfolding and structural pathologies prion and prion-like proteins. These breakthroughs were achieved by using state of the art physico-chemical technologies (mass spectrometer coupled with ion-mobility financed by Ile de France region).

Recently we choose to work on α-synuclein (Parkinson) that shares similar properties with prion protein. In this context we identified a potential biomarker (conformational biomarker) of Parkinson disease. However, before any use of this last as a clinical diagnostic biomarker we must confirm our results both on models (mutants and model animals) and biological samples from patients. In these cases, we will have to deal with extremely complex solutions where α-synuclein must be extracted.

Then the goal of this study is to develop a lab-on-a-chip device that would allow in one step the extraction and purification of our biomarker and its use as a diagnostic of Parkinson disease.