Chorafas Foundation Award 2009 - Abonnenc Mélanie

"For her remarkable PhD thesis dedicated to the development of miniaturized analytical systems for mass spectrometry based protein studies."

Miniaturized analytical systems for mass spectrometry-based protein studies

Since the 90's, microfluidic devices are established in the field of (bio)analytical chemistry and life sciences as a good alternative to conventional laboratory-scale equipment, because they allow low reagent and time consumption, lower costs and high-throughput. Current proteomic techniques depend strongly on the development of analytical methodologies and instrumentation. More specifically, mass spectrometry-based workflows play a major role to identify, characterize and quantify proteins. Several approaches have been proposed to complement the mass spectrometric analysis of tryptic peptides using chemical tagging to isolate specific subclasses of proteins by affinity baits or for quantitation purposes. In this context, this thesis work focuses on the development of microsystems integrating different functionalities. For the first time, an electrospray micromixer chip was designed to perform on-line chemical derivatization of peptides and study chemical kinetics before mass spectrometric analysis. The enhancement of chemical reaction extents in a sandwich mixer-reactor by optimal positioning of the reactants across the microchannel was demonstrated as a simple alternative to physical mixing. Multiplexed sample screening was also rendered possible via multi-track electrospray chips, and integrated magnetic track arrays were characterized for improved affinity-bead capture in microchannels. In all these investigations, numerical simulations of physico-chemical phenomena supported the experimental works.