Acting and reacting in life science biotechnologies
Enteroviruses are common human viruses causing rather mild symptoms. However many different species and serotypes (incl. Echoviruses, Polioviruses, Coxsackieviruses A and B) can cause serious illness (like EV71 & Coxsackie A16 with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease or EV70 with acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis, neurologic dysfunction and permanent polio-like paralysis).
In this brief post, you will discover recent Antigen & Antibody developments made in this field by Meridian Life Sciences.
Abnova offer a series of new monoclonal research antibodies to support the study of the Zika virus. These are available through tebu-bio across Europe. Let’s take a look at these monoclonals, 100% validated for immuno-assay applications.
Immunofluorescence of monoclonal antibody to SQSTM1 on HeLa cell. [antibody concentration 10 ug/ml] (Cat No. H00008878-M01).
Autophagy was first described in the 60s, and it presents clear differences vs apoptosis. While apoptosis is a mechanism that kills the cells (apoptosis = self-killing), autophagy is more related to the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components (autophagy = self-eating). [Read more…]
A publication by Órpez-Zafra et al. presents the development of a new sandwich ELISA method to check sIFNAR2 levels in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients. [Read more…]
The sensitivity and specificity of the primary and secondary antibodies used together with the IHC procedure used, are critical to avoid biased results. Several factors can cause false-positive or false-negative data, so they should all be verified as much as possible for each experimental set-up.
3 main experimental stages particularly need to be under control:
Here, let’s look at 3 tips that will be of help to improve your IHC data. [Read more…]
A recent publication by ArrayBridge, Inc., in cooperation with Wayne State University, focuses on monoclonal antibody (mAb) Higher Order Structure Analysis.
The clinical and biological properties of protein-based therapeutics, or biologics, are closely related to their Higher Order Structures (HOS), which in turn can be altered by many physical and chemical conditions. The paper describes a novel technology to monitor changes in mAb HOS – the Protein Conformational Array (PCA) ELISA – which is based on a unique bank of more than 30 well-characterized antibodies enabling the measurement of protein epitope change on the surface of the mAb. [Read more…]
The use of validated antibodies are primordial for Breast Cancer research. Let’s see why, and which were the most popular ones in 2015.
Breast cancer arises in cell units whose function is to secrete milk, ducto-lobular breast units, mainly in women, with 89 cases per 100 000 (1). 5 to 10% of these cancers have an inherited genetic origin; 85-90% of cases (known as sporadic or non-hereditary) have environmental origins as yet often unidentified. A significant proportion of sporadic breast cancers is induced by hormonal treatment in women with a predisposition to this type of cancer. Some lifestyle choices (alcohol, trans fats, obesity, lack of exercise) or gynecological (late first pregnancy, not breastfeeding, etc.) also promote cancer.
If detected at an early stage, this cancer can be cured in 9 cases out of 10. Nevertheless, one of the difficulties of curing this disease is to identify the biological characteristics of each patient’s tumor.
Antibody-based techniques are widely used in Life Science laboratories. Antibody purification is often required to raise purity yield of antibody production batches or to reach publication-grade data. In this post, take advantage of some technical tips and troubleshooting points to improve your antibody purification.
Three papers on the role of the TGF-beta pathway in different cancers have recently been published.
It was already known that this pathway is involved in processes such as cell growth, cell differentiation, apoptosis, cellular homeostasis and other cellular functions. The pathway as such works in quite a simple way: [Read more…]
Ions channels are pore-forming membrane proteins that control ion transit across the cell membrane to various stimuli. It was shown that deregulation or dysfunction of channels are clearly linked to many human diseases like cancer.
Ion channels can affect immune cells activation and their cytotoxicity against cancer cells. Their abnormal expression or activity stimulate the malignant phenotype. All these facts indicate that novel cancer therapies could be found with pharmacology agents ion channel target specific.