This summer, Moffett et al. published in Nature Communications (Nature Communications – doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00505-8) a new approach for cancer therapeutic research and development based on mRNA delivery. They called it ‘Hit-and-run programming’ because of the simplicity of the method. Interestingly, the optimization of the delivery was performed with eGFP mRNA.  This post describes how TriLink’s mRNAs contribute to the simple and efficient delivery of mRNA into cells.

Expression systems – removing their contaminants

CHO, E. Coli and Pichia are useful expression systems for drug production. This can be for proteins, enzymes or antibody productions. Research and development for therapeutic perspectives requires a high level of quality controls. Such expression systems contain +1000 host cell proteins (HCPs). A major challenge in biological component production is to remove this HCP contamination. In order to monitor removal efficiency (during protein purification, as mentioned further on in this article), Canopy Biosciences have developed and optimised HCP detection kits based on the principle of the sandwich ELISA test as illustrated below.

Principle of the HCP Detection assay is based on sandwich ELISA test – by Canopy Biosciences at tebu-bio.com

In a recent publication, researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (USA) describe that Serotonin released by human beta cell inhibits glucagon secretion by alpha cells. They demonstrated that this paracrine loop was mediated via the cAMP pathway. To do so, they captured in live human pancreatic islet cells cAMP signals using a specific fluorescent biosensor.

Immunotherapy represents a field in Drug Discovery which is quickly developing and leading to significant progress in treatments of a number of diseases, especially cancer. The approach is based on inducing, enhancing, or surpressing an immune response. Therapeutic manipulation of immunopathways has led to promising clinical results . The first therapeutic antibodies directed against the checkpoint receptor PD-1 have been already brought to the market (Nivolumab, Pembrolizumab) by Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck/MSD respectively, and approved for the treatment of diverse cancer types.

Today, I would like to review tools to build up a comprehensive assay set up for  cell based inhibitor screening on PD-1 / PD-L1/PD-L2 binding.