Hyaluronic acid (also called HA or Hyaluronan) is a glycosaminoglycan with elevated viscosity, enabling tissues (eye, skin, joint and synovial fluid…) to resist to physical and mechanical constraints (torsion, flexion…). Over time, when HA production declines, tissues progressively lose these tensile properties, leading to wrinkles and fold, weak re-epithelisation and age-related troubles. But HA is also involved in many other chronic and cancer-related diseases. In this post, we’ll review one of the most popular HA quantification assays (ELISA test), known to be highly sensitive and robust, appreciated by researchers involved in cosmetology and drug discovery.

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)

Inflammation is involved in many fields including cosmetology, drug discovery (including RNA-based vaccines), and diagnostic index development, as well as being linked to almost every disease such as HIV, cancers, or neurodegenerative diseases. For this reason, analysis of the inflammasome is a major concern. Immunoassays are a classic and affordable method to quantify the corresponding proteins secreted by cells during inflammation. Nevertheless,  there are well-known drawbacks and limitations raising key questions about the sensitivity, reproducibility and even the universality of the results. We can’t all use mass spectrometry, but fortunately, ELISA tests and multiplexing have evolved. Let’s discover how much.

Immune checkpoint molecules play an important role in T cell functionality after TCR/MHC signalling. Blockade of two B7/CD28 family checkpoint molecules, CTLA-4 and PD-1, have already demonstrated excellent efficacy in increasing T cell responses to a variety of tumours. Identification of novel target and new checkpoint blockade remains a key element in Drug Discovery (See “Drug discovery: Immunotherapy checkpoint research for new Cancer treatments“). In this post, let’s take a look at the “Quantibody® Human Immune Checkpoint Molecule Array 1” for the detection of 10 Human Immune Checkpoint biomarkers.