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.

In a previous post, I introduced several biomarker arrays & assays, companion tools for biomarker discovery, monitoring and quantification. Today, I will focus more specifically on high density proteomics microarrays. This post aims at helping you understand what services are available in this domain and how they could fit within your project.

Indeed, tebu-bio has just been appointed by RayBiotech as one of the 3 companies worldwide to perform contract research on their recently developed higher density proteomics tools. A good opportunity to talk about this!

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.

On your journey to Biomarker profiling, you will reach the point where you need to quantify the proteins of interest identified along the way (eg. validation of semi-quantitative array results; biomarker discovery with an initial hunch on which pathway is involved).

At this stage, you will have narrowed down the number of targets you want to look at. However, the use of ELISAs is likely to be still too costly, too time consuming, and may require too much sample volume.