Affinity magnetic beads for chemical biology and medicine

Biological events in cells are caused by specific interactions among a wide variety of biomolecules, including proteins, nucleotides, chemicals, and so on. Chemical biology is focused on elucidatingthe mechanism and network of biological reactions by using chemical compounds. Several chemical compounds show specific inhibition or activation against target proteins, mediated by a specific binding to the functional domain of proteins. Therefore, the identification of target proteins for chemical compounds provides us with valuable information about biological and biochemical reactions, and also anew insight for developing therapeutic agents by an analysis of structureactivityrelationship. Despite the importance of identifying target molecules, some difficulties are encountered in aconventional affinity purification system, due to their high nonspecific binding and weakness of physical properties of the carrier. To resolve such problems, we have developed anovel affinity nanoparticle for high-performance purification. In Section 9.2, we introduce the construction and the properties of our affinity particles.