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Tebubio's blog - Acting and reacting in life sciences and biotechnologies
  • Home
  • Research areas
    • ADME-Tox
    • Biomarkers
    • Cell Biology and Signalling
    • Cell Sourcing – Cell Culture Technologies
    • Drug Discovery
    • Gene Expression – Molecular Biology
    • Stem Cells
    • Supplying Discovery Tools
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  • Meet the authors
Biomarkers

Novel biomarkers in gastric cancer

03/02/2015 by Ana Arraztio No Comments

The word “cancer” groups a series of diseases of different origin and different prognosis, with differentiated molecular mechanisms causing their onset and progression. Hence, discovery of novel biomarkers for each type of cancer, allowing to understand their underlying mechanisms and provide a specific (or even personalised) treatment is a fast-moving area of research.

In previous posts, we have described the finding of novel biomarkers for several types of cancer (e.g. esophageal, glioblastoma, pancreatic cancer, etc).  Let’s take a look today at gastric cancer.

An antibody array has recently been launched, allowing to detect and quantify the levels of 5 biomarkers associated to gastric cancer (CA19-9, CA72-4, CEA, Pepsinogen 1 and Pepsinogen 2). The array is not intended for clinical use, but rather, as a valuable tool to study cohorts of patients and see the levels of these biomarkers in serum and other types of samples, in order to validate them as future clinical markers.Untitled

CA19-9 is a glycosylated protein that has traditionally been considered as a tumour biomarker. It is not specific to gastric cancer, as it can also be present in pancreas cancer. It is useful, however, to monitor disease progression in some cases.

CA72-4 is another glyosylated protein, a bit more specific for gastric cancer than CA19-9, though it can also be present in some types of ovarian cancer.

Detection of CA19-9 and CA72-4 can be done adding CEA to the pannel, which increases the sensitivity and specificity from 42 % to 57 %. CEA (Carcinoembryonic antigen) groups a series of very similar glycoproteins involved in cell adhesion.

Finally, pepsinogens are clear indicators of gastric disease, and ratio between pepsinogen I and II can have a clinical significance for many gastric disorders. Combination of all these 5 biomarkers can be a good way to study gastric cancer in a more specific way.

Which model are you working on? If you’re interested this antibody array, or in any other arrays for your biomarkers of interest, get in touch!

 

 

Cell Biology and Signalling, Supplying Discovery Tools

Actin staining techniques in fixed and living cells

by Ali El Baya, PhD No Comments

Actin can be stained in living and fixed cells to determine and follow the structure and function of the cytoskeleton. The actin cytoskeleton is a very dynamic and labile structure in the living cell, but it can be fixed by either cold methanol or paraformaldehyde prior to probing or staining for actin structures.

Actin staining in fixed cells

Phalloidin - Actin binding

Fluorescent phalloidin binding to F-Actin, Source: Cytoskeleton Inc.

In fixed cells, actin structures can be visualized by actin antibodies, fluorescent phalloidins, or even electron microscopy.
Antibodies recognize both monomer and polymer (filamentous or F-actin) actin and hence tend to have a high background compared to probes that bind only F-actin. Well designed fluorescent phalloidins only bind to the native quaternary structure of F-actin and therefore have a low background. To create the correct fixation conditions for phalloidin binding, paraformaldehyde must be used as the fixative because it retains the quanternary protein structure which is necessary for high affinity. Methanol destroys the native conformation and hence is not suitable for actin staining with phalloidin. 

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