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 previous post, we discussed about how important it is to have research tools that allow to study secretome biomarkers outside the usual human and rodents. Either because other species are important research models, or more importantly, because they are the final patient that will be treated, such as pets or cattle.

miRNAs are key mediators in cell processes, allowing to activate or inhibit the expression of certain genes important in different physiological processes. How miRNAs work, and which ones are relevant, are a hot topic of research nowadays, and important advances are being made in areas such as Oncology and the Immune response.

Many researchers would be keen to identify new targets for their research project: add a new cytokine to the classical inflammatory panels, find the missing link between 2 phosphorylation pathways, dig into the miRNA to find a new therapeutic target…
They expect they’ll need dedicated (and expensive) new equipment. Not necessarily! Let’s take a look at assays that use existing and quite common readers, or that can easily be outsourced to reliable labs…