Antibody News

ABCG1 (ATP-binding cassette sub-family G member 1) is a transporter protein that is primarily involved in macrophage lipid homeostasis. It is a member of the superfamily of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters and localizes to intracellular compartments associated with endoplasmic reticulum and golgi membranes. Its expression is highest in macrophage-rich tissue such as spleen, lung, thymus, and brain. ABCG1 is expressed on the cell surface and in intracellular compartments of cholesterol-laden macrophages.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a well-structured composite of collagens, proteoglycans, glycoproteins, and growth factors proficient of generating variable measures of tissue tensile potency, from mucosal linings to bones. ECM predominantly comprises the cellular milieu outside the circulation and is established as having a major regulatory effect on cell activity.  There has been a considerable amount of attention towards the disparate conditions in which ECM unambiguously sends or alters signals to the surrounding cells. Interactions with ECM influence virtually all features of necessary cellular functions which include proliferation, migration, along with that of protein and gene expression and cell delineation. Specific cell-matrix interactions are critical for the endurance of many cell types, and loss of this adhesion dependence is a classic hallmark of neoplastic change. ECM remodeling promotes tumor...

The Lin28-Let-7 stem cell differentiation regulatory pathway is responsible for maintaining stem cell pluripotency. Specifically, Lin28 causes uridiylation of the let-7 miRNA precursor, which prevents differentiation processing by Dicer. Instead, the Uridylated let-7 is degraded by a previously unidentified exonuclease protein. In the article “A role for the Perlman syndrome exonuclease Dis3l2 in the Lin28-let-7 pathway” HM Chang, et al. used Novus’ Dis3l2 Antibody (NBP1-84740) to identify Dis3l2 as the exonuclease responsible for uridylated let-7 degradation.  Interestingly, Dis3l2 binds several proteins previously implicated in Perlman Sydrome.

The implications of this finding are two-fold: (1) The data suggests that Dis3l2 helps maintain pluripoentcy in stem cells, and (2) although speculative, the Lin28-let-7 pathway may be relevant to Perlman Sydrome and cancer.  Additional research is...

Synaptonemal Complex Protein 1 (SCP1) is a novel tumor antigen that belongs to the growing family of cancer/testis antigens (CTAs). CTAs are theoretically ideal targets for tumor immunotherapy. Unlike most auto-antigens, CTAs are highly immunogenic, even in the autologous cancer-bearing patients. Furthermore, because of their very restricted normal tissue expression, immunotherapy targeting CTAs is expected to be more specific and less toxic. These two theoretical properties of CTAs have arisen from the belief that, because they are testicular-specific, they are normally only expressed in the immune privileged testicles where there is an apparent lack of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecules on the surface of germ cells (1).

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E-cadherin (also known as Arc-1, uvomorulin, and cell-CAM 120/80) is a calcium-regulated adhesion molecule expressed in most normal epithelial tissues and the loss of E-cadherin can cause dedifferentiation and invasiveness in several cancers (1). Loss of E-Cadherin expression correlated with the invasiveness of carcinoma (2). Carcinoma cell lines with an epithelioid phenotype were noninvasive and expressed E-cadherin suggesting a reciprocal relationship between levels of E-Cadherin expression and their invasiveness as detected by E-Cadherin antibodies (3).

Reduced expression of E-cadherin by IHC has been...

Integrins are a group of trans-membrane receptors which encompass alpha and beta subunits acting as adhesion particles in addition to various other important cellular functions. Integrins are recognized to enable cell-cell, cell-ECM, cell-pathogen interface along with signaling through the plasma membrane comprising of critical cellular functions such as differentiation, migration in addition to survival. Several investigators have documented variations in integrin expression and function in several cancers. Numerous integrins such as αVβ3, αVβ5 and α5β1 are attributed to angiogenesis, a critical factor in tumor metastasis and tumor growth. In a recent study (1) it has been demonstrated that the integrins are capable of regulating the expression and activity of several proteases through various pathways there by contributing to the invasive potential of several tumors. FACS has also...

The extracellular matrix ECM) is the material found in the extracellular environment of all tissues and organs. The composition of the extracellular framework of all vertebrates is dominated by a class of molecules known as collagens, each with unique features suited for a particular function and location.

Collagen proteins are composed of three subunit polypeptides that vary in length and interact to form a triple helix due to a unique repeated (Gly-x-y) sequence. Collagen I is one of the most common forms and is...

GFP (green florescent protein), originally discovered in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, (1) is one of the most extensively investigated and exploited proteins in the area of life sciences. GFP is well known for its proficiency emit fluorescence and has proven itself as an indicating marker of gene expression and protein target in intact cells and organisms. To date GFP variants can be chiefly distributed into seven classes based on their elements of their chromophores.  One of the first proposed applications of GFP was to detect the gene expression in vivo as a marker protein, thereby allowing the gene product to be detected in subcellular localization studies.

Florescence activated cell sorting or Flow cytometry permits concurrent measurements of numerous florescence and light scattered events by illuming single cells or molecules in suspension as they flow through a sensing area. Distinct cells or particles could be tangibly separated corresponding to their biochemical properties and biological parameters, while the light is scattered on the molecules either in the form of forward or side scatter. The forward scatter is resourceful in distinguishing between the live and dead cells while the side scatter provides evidence for the granulated content within the particle of interest. A consolidation of both the scattered configurations is helpful in delineating multiple cell types in a given cell population. The flow cytometry is a useful resource and relevant in the separation of the cells based on their subtype or epitope manifestation and the process is popularly known as cell sorting or FACS analysis....

Vascular endothelial growth factor receptors 1 and 2 (VEGFR1 and VEGFR2) are related family members of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family of membrane receptor tyrosine kinases. They are key regulators of physiological angiogenesis during fundamental developmental processes such as embryogenesis, skeletal growth, and reproductive functions. Specifically, VEGF and its high-affinity binding receptors are thought to be important for the development of the embryonic vasculature. The VEGF-kinase ligand/receptor signaling system plays a key role in vascular development and regulation of vascular permeability. The VEGF signaling pathway has been heavily implicated in situations of pathological angiogenesis like those found with tumors, intraocular neovascular disorders, and other...

Ku70, known by several synonyms including X-ray repair cross-complementing, 5'-deoxyribose-5-phosphate lyase Ku70 protein 6, 70 kDa subunit of Ku antigen, XRCC6, and G22P1, is a 70 kDa protein that was shown to be involved in multiple cellular pathways, mainly involving DNA repair and recombination (2). Ku70 functions as a single-stranded DNA-dependent ATP-dependent helicase in the Ku70/Ku80 complex.  Ku70 plays a role in non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) required for double-strand DNA break repair and V(D)J recombination.  Ku70 has also been found to participate in complex DNA strand breaks in association with Ku80, XRCC4/...

Protein tyrosine phosphorylation is a fundamental mechanism for controlling many aspects of cellular processes, as well as aspects of human health and diseases. Compared with phosphoserine and phosphothreonine, phosphotyrosine signaling is more tightly regulated, but often more challenging to characterize, due to significantly lower levels of tyrosine phosphorylation (1). While phosphorylation in general is fairly common, tyrosine phosphorylation is very rare. However, tyrosine phosphorylated proteins are very easy to purify, and therefore the few tyrosine phosphorylation sites on proteins are well-understood (2). Tyrosine kinase pathways are critical to proper cell growth, metabolic regulation, and normal differentiation which are in turn controlled by tyrosine phosphorylation while aberrant phospho-tyrosine signaling causes a breakdown in the normal regulation of cellular...