ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,304,884, issued on May 20, was assigned to Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (Madison, Wis.).

"Photo-cleavable surfactants" was invented by Ying Ge (Madison, Wis.), Song Jin (Madison, Wis.), Tania Guardado Alvarez (Madison, Wis.) and Kyle Brown (Madison, Wis.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides photo-cleavable anionic surfactants, particularly 4-hexylphenylazosulfonate (Azo) and sodium 4-hexylphenylazosulfonate derivatives, which can be rapidly degraded upon UV irradiation, for top-down and bottom-up proteomics. These surfactants can effectively solubilize proteins and peptide fragments with performance compa...