The close relation between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), unpaired adaptive immune responses and overexpression of inflammatory cytokines has been described more than a decade ago (1, 2).
More recently, the notion of “cytokine storm” or “cytokine release syndrome” has been used by Life Scientists when they have monitored the expression level dynamics of cytokines in the sera of COVID-19 patients with acute lung damages and respiratory distress. (3)

Many initiatives led by worldwide scientific networks are currently being launched to decipher cellular mechanisms involved in SARS-CoV-2 cellular entry. For example, a recent study has identified 332 high confidence SARS-CoV-2-human protein-protein interactions (Gordon D.E. at al. “A SARS-CoV-2-Human Protein-Protein Interaction Map Reveals Drug Targets and Potential Drug-Repurposing” (March 2020) bioRxiv). All these efforts are aimed at rapidly discovering antiviral drugs with proven efficacy, and at developing vaccines to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks. This crisis also enables pharma & biotech companies to reposition their existing antiviral drugs (Harrison C. “Coronavirus puts drug repurposing on the fast track” (Feb. 2020), Nature). In this post, we’ll introduce new, recently released in vitro assays and SARS-CoV related chemical compounds and compound libraries to support COVID-19 early phase drug discovery projects.

Chromatin profiling assays enable the mapping of protein-DNA interactions that influence chromatin modeling and gene expression.
Over the years, Chromatin ImmunoPrecipitation (ChIP) assays became the gold-standard for studying transcription factor–DNA binding interactions, nucleosome dynamics, and epigenetics (ex. histone post-translational modifications (PTMs)). This post aims at introducing the latest evolution of ChIP assays: CUTANA CUT&RUN and ChIC assays.

Over the last years, ChIP experts express the need for more sensitivity, faster protocols, and more reproducible results (and ideally starting from less starting cellular material). These expectations led to the emergence of new experimental antibody-based experimental approaches like Chromatin ImmunoCleavage (ChIC) assays, and Cleavage Under Targets and Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN) methods.

Due to their ability to simulate the characteristics of most soft tissues and natural scaffolds, hydrogels are now an attractive material for developing synthetic Extracellular Matrix (ECM) analogs.

Recently, the VitroGel™ hydrogels have been designed for researchers willing to fully master the characteristics of the synthetic ECM to be used with their 3D / 2D cell cultures. In this post, we will review the main benefits of the recently released VitroGel™ solutions.