Protein arrays enable the analysis of the biological function / activity of dozens to hundreds of proteins in one experiment (e.g. auto-antibody detection, protein-protein interactions, small molecule screening…). In this post, let’s review the recent Raybiotech Protein Arrays focusing on Immunology.

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.

Research tools aimed at exploring mitochondria are becoming more and more popular and cover multiple experimental applications. They go from primary antibodies validated for immuno-assays (see “10 Mitochondrial marker antibodies“) to fluorescent probes for mitochondria-related events monitor in living-cells (e.g. MitoPeDPP for live cell imaging, mitophagy or singlet Oxygen (1O2) detection…). Here I’d like to introduce 3 new molecules developed by Focus Biomolecules to further decipher mitochondrial biology.

The human Flap Endonuclease 1 (a.k.a. hFEN1) is a structure-specific nuclease involved in DNA replication and repair. This nuclease is thought to be a potential therapeutic target for treating cancers (e.g. chemosensitization, synthetic lethality) hence, the need for discovering and characterizing new hFEN1 inhibitors.