MINNEAPOLIS, June 10, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. ("Protea") announced today that it has launched a new web-based commercial mass spectrometry service, named ProteaScope, that enables researchers to navigate across their tissue sections using high resolution microscopy to pinpoint specific morphological structures for mass spectrometry analysis. Diseases such as cancer have traditionally been diagnosed through the microscopic examination of the morphological features of tissue and cells - a technique known as histology. ProteaScope is a first-of-its-kind microscopy-driven mass spectrometry platform that provides additional levels of molecular information to complement traditional histologic examination. Based on Protea's LAESI® technology, exclusively licensed from George Washington University, the new platform was developed through the integration of fiber optics, LAESI, and high resolution microscopy and mass spectrometry.
The Company made the announcement today at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry in Minneapolis, MN.
ProteaScope will be offered through the Company's services division, ProteaWorks, which provides researchers access to the Company's state of the art mass spectrometry infrastructure and expert staff. The ProteaScope service workflow starts by the researcher submitting their tissue samples and scheduling a ProteaScope session. Through this web-based session, the researcher will be able to view their tissue samples through a high-resolution microscope to identify morphologic features of interest and navigate the LAESI fiber optic tip to that location. Once identified, biomolecular information will be captured by a mass spectrometry analysis. Following the session, the researcher will receive a report containing the high-resolution microscopy images and mass spectra data from their ProteaScope session.
Steve Turner, President and CEO of Protea, commented, "We are pleased to announce the availability of ProteaScope services. It has been a dream of clinical medicine to identify biomolecules directly in tissue samples without having to touch the tissue, and the ProteaScope platform enables this." Turner continued, "Protea is the leader in the mass spectrometry imaging market, and ProteaScope fulfills our vision to integrate mass spectrometry with the traditional methods of microscopy and histology. The breadth and flexibility of our core LAESI technology and our work with Dr. Akos Vertes, co-inventor of LAESI, have been integral to the development of ProteaScope. We look forward to working with customers as they take advantage of our expert staff, extensive mass spectrometry imaging infrastructure and the ProteaScope platform."
About Protea Biosciences Group, Inc.
Protea is a technology leader in the field of mass spectrometry ("mass spec") molecular imaging - the identification and localization of the molecular products of living cells, that is foundational science for all pharmaceutical, medical, and life science research.
Protea website: www.proteabio.com
About ProteaScope: https://proteabio.com/ASMS2013/ProteaScope
About LAESI-MS (Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization)
LAESI-MS (Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry) was invented in the laboratory of Akos Vertes, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry at The George Washington University and exclusively licensed to Protea. LAESI enables rapidly obtaining mass spectrometry data profiles of the biomolecules present in cells. LAESI analysis can be performed on tissue sections identical to those used in traditional histological staining and examination. Without the need for time-consuming sample preparation that can lead to sample loss and contamination, LAESI-MS allows for direct, rapid, and reproducible data, which decreases both the time and cost to obtain mass spec imaging data.
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Protea and LAESI are registered trademarks of Protea Biosciences Group, Inc.