In a previous post dedicated to Quantitative arrays (Quantibody), I introduced our L-Series aimed at a broad one shot profiling of up to 1000 markers at once. This relative quantitation technology allows you to perform a first screen of your samples of interest versus a control, before you go on to targeted profiling using either pathway specific arrays, or a custom array including the targets of interest identified with the initial L-series screen.

This year again, we were pleased to attend the Annual meeting of the AACR (American Association for Cancer Research), which took place in Washington DC, USA at the beginning of April.

Nadia Normand Ph.D. (Business Development Manager, tebu-bio), presented a poster with results from collaborative work between the Centre for Molecular Biophysics of the CNRS (Orléans, France), tebu-bio Laboratories (Le Perray en Yvelines, France), Anaxomics Biotech (Barcelona, Spain) and the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy (Wroclaw, Poland).

This poster “miRNome analyses reveal that activity of CAF expressed podoplanin in the tumor microenvironment is modulated by exosome miRNAs involved in the PTEN-PI3K-AKT-mTOR signaling” is now available for downloading – get your copy here.

In a recent paper, Horita H. et al. identified a set of novel Post-Translational Modifications (PTMs) of the protein Programmed Cell Death Ligand (PD-L1).

Profile of PD-L1 post-translational modifications and their roles in regulating PD-L1 protein levels. Source: Horita H. et al. (2017) – http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neo.2017.02.006 (Cytoskleton Inc).

For this, a novel series of PTM enrichment assays  enabling the highly specific profiling of 4 key PTM profiles (Tyrosine phosphorylation (pY), Acetylation (Ac), Unbiquitination (Ub) and SUMOylation 2/3), have been used on EGF-stimulated A431 cell line. They revealed that EGF induced pY, Ac, mono- and poly-Ub Of PD-L1 in these EGF treated epidermoid carcinoma cells. The authors also suggested that the balance between mono- / poly-Ub of PD-L1 might regulate PD-L1 stability, as already described with LDB-1 protein.

These novel PD-L1 PTMs and their related regulatory actions might be valuable information in the future for the design of drug strategies targeting PD-L1/PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibition.

One of the biggest challenges as a researcher in life sciences, is to obtain proof of concept the more predictive as possible. To help you to reach your objectives, many innovative tools are being developed and new techniques are emerging. In this post, I’d like to essentially focus on two innovative cell culture devices which mimic in-vivo conditions in in-vitro systems, in fields such as 3D cell culture, Microfluidics and oriented cell culture.