FLEA-ChIP (Fast, Low-input, Easy and Affordable Chromatin ImmunoPrecipitation) is an efficient, reproducible, and sensitive method for ultra-low input epigenetic profiling, scalable to single cell resolution.

FLEA-ChIP has been specifically designed to identify protein-DNA (histone marks and transcription factors) interactions from limiting and degraded samples at a genome-wide scale, making it suitable for the profiling of clinical samples while identifying specific disease biomarkers or epigenetic patterns able to predict patient outcomes or responsiveness to therapies.

Technology:

Epigenetic reprogramming and chromatin misregulation have been broadly associated with disease progression. The possibility to trace epigenetic changes along disease progression is key to understanding the mechanisms whereby cancer and other pathologies develop, being essential for the implementation of personalized treatments. However, patient samples are on many occasions far from ideal to identify epigenetic alterations. For example, cancer patient samples, such as tissue biopsies, are limited in quantity and frequently degraded, making currently available technologies unsuitable for their characterization. FLEA-ChIP is an innovative technology specifically developed to identify and compare epigenetic profiles from scarce (from low-input samples or even single-cells) or degraded chromatin samples.

FLEA-ChIP produces highly reproducible data across experiments and can be implemented in any molecular biology laboratory, without requirement for complex steps or expensive devices to perform the assay. FLEA-ChIP stands out as the only solution in the field allowing identification of chromatin states from degraded or very scarce sample types. Single cell resolution FLEA-ChIP (scFLEA-ChIP) has also been developed for implementation through microfluidics and microplate automation systems.

Advantages:

• High immunoprecipitation sensitivity and library complexity and can be performed at single-cell resolution.
• Bypasses technical limitations of ChIP sequencing for scarce / degraded samples.
• Simple, easy-to-implement methodology.
• FLEA-ChIP implementation allows: i) disease diagnosis, ii) discovery of disease-predictive/treatment-response biomarkers for iii) patient stratification and treatment follow up.