The Wistar Institute Protein Expression Facility

The Protein Expression Facility is a shared resource laboratory that provides Wistar Cancer Center Members and non-Wistar scientists technical assistance with viral vector preparation and the expression and purification of recombinant proteins. The Facility has greater than 20 years of experience in recombinant protein expression with special expertise in the use of baculovirus expression systems (BVES). The Facility offers the following services:

1. Recombinant plasmid DNA engineering
2. Viral vector production (i.e. baculovirus and retrovirus)
3. Analytical and preparative scale expression of nascent or epitope-tagged recombinant proteins
4. Protein purification

These goals are accomplished by a centralized laboratory with dedicated, experienced staff, which enables high-throughput, economy of scale, virus preparation and protein expression services, including quality assurance and control procedures to ensure efficient, consistent production and purification of recombinant proteins and viral vectors. Many recombinant proteins produced by the facility have been used for crystallization efforts, analytical biochemistry studies designed to investigate enzymatic properties, structure-function relationships between protein-protein, protein-nucleic-acid, and protein-small molecule interactions, custom antibody production, experimental cancer vaccines, and development of miniaturized assays for small molecule screening.