Proteolytic enzymes represent a major area of study since they are involved in a wide variety of disorders. As an example, the caspase family is involved in apoptosis and in several neurogenic disorders such as the Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and also sclerosis. Proteases are also involved in illnesses such as arthritic disease or in infectious diseases like HIV. Currently determination for protein presence, a lot of experiments are necessary. Firstly, one has to isolate the cells of interest, then to isolate proteins from them, and then identify them by immunologic assays. All those steps are time-consuming and a faster method to screen cells for the presence of protease would be of particular interest.

Therefore, the project aims to develop an assay allowing the screening of the activity of a chosen protease inside the cell. One of the applications of such an intracellular assay would be finding protease inhibitors because factors such as the cytotoxicity of a potential inhibitor and its ability to enter into the cell would be automatically determined when screening with this assay. Once the system is set up, the screening of different cells for the presence of a proteolytic activity or the screening of different inhibitors for a unique protease will be developed and would represent a great tool for biological screening.