PTI Launches to Scale Protein Analysis Towards Scientific and Medical Breakthroughs

To resolve these limitations, PTI will scale the throughput of single-cell proteomics by 100-1000 fold and use these gains to directly investigate disease mechanisms and resolve problems that have proven intractable for decades. PTI is set up as a nonprofit focused research organization to freely share its technology and discoveries and thus maximize their benefits to the research community, biotech, and patients.

PTI will scale up a framework for parallel analysis of both proteins and single human cells (hence, “parallel-squared”) thus enabling multiplicative increases in throughput. This framework was pioneered at Northeastern University in the laboratory of Professor Nikolai Slavov with support from an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised grant of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Building upon these foundational results, Professor Slavov, Dr. Aleksandra Petelski and Dr. Harrison Specht are creating PTI to rapidly develop and apply the single-cell proteomics technologies beyond the scale of academic research. Professor Slavov will direct PTI and continue to lead his research group at Northeastern University.

Partners

Support from the Schmidt Futures Network and other partners allow PTI to implement open science principles with industry-level resources as part of Convergent Research’s model to unblock research bottlenecks with non-profit start-ups. PTI will benefit from close interactions with academic and industry leaders in research fields such as mass spectrometry, machine learning, chemistry, and neuroscience.

PTI’s technology platform is broadly applicable to biomedical challenges that have remained resistant to existing approaches and would benefit from analyzing thousands of proteins and protein modifications across millions of single cells. Alzheimer’s will be the first focus for this technology-driven research organization. This research will benefit from collaborations with leading experts, such as Prof. Bradley Hyman who directs the Alzheimer’s disease research unit at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease.

Through its continued support of Convergent Research’s initiatives, the Schmidt Futures Network aims to support early-stage organizations and exceptional people to make a large impact in the world. To learn more about the Schmidt Futures Network and Convergent Research, read the article in Fast Company.

New career paths

PTI will create a well-resourced, open-science environment to enable scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to catalyze a leap in protein analysis technology and use it to explore new biological frontiers. This means that members of PTI will be supported with industry-level resources to do research and then disseminate their discoveries and innovations to the broader biomedical community through frequent publications, presentations, and submissions to public data portals.

To view open positions at Parallel Squared Technology Institute, visit our job posting page