Friday, September 19, 2008

PDGFs in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Tumor and Stromal Cells

Serving Cancer and Tumorigenesis Researhers is a central component to our business strategy. This means constantly building our catalog of Cancer Antibodies and Cancer Proteins.

I personally follow up with every customer that purchases our Cancer Research Reagents. This ensures they work as expected. In most cases, this is validate. If not, we fix the expressed issues.

We are now seeing more confirmation by the reagents being referenced in publications. In this publication, our PDGF-C antibody was used as a marker for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Tumors.

"In univariate analyses, high tumor cell expression of PDGF-B (p  0.001), PDGF-C (p  0.01), and PDGFR- (p  0.026) were negative prognostic indicators for disease-specific survival."

Donnem, Tom MD, Al-Saad, Samer MD, Al-Shibli, Khalid MD, Andersen, Sigve MD, Busund, Lill-Tove MD, PhD, Bremnes, Roy M. MD, PhD. Prognostic Impact of Platelet-Derived Growth Factors in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Tumor and Stromal Cells. Journal of Thoracic Oncology. 3(9):963-970, September 2008.

Featured Reagent:
PDGF-C

Related Reagents to Consider:
PDGF R Alpha
PDGF R Beta
VEGF/Flt-1
EGF
Cancer Antibodies
All Neurotrophin and Growth Factor Antibodies
Platelet Derived Growth Factor Proteins
Cancer Research Proteins
Neurotrophin and Growth Factor Proteins

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Rat Sensory Neurons and NK-1

A publication featuring our Neurokinin-1 (NK 1) Receptor just crossed my radar. It is authored by our friend, Dr. Matt Ramer.

Matt and his team at University of British Columbia study primary sensory nerve cells (neurons), which are responsible for the transmission of somatic (bodily) sensations such as touch, pain, hot, cold and so on from the periphery (skin, muscles and viscera) to the central nervous system (CNS, spinal cord and brain). His research extends to therapeutic potential of neurotrophins on regeneration in spinal cord injury and deafferentation pain.

In the past several years, he has generouly shared NT-3 and BDNF IHC data with us.

Here's a link to the publication:

Matt Ramer. Anatomical and functional characterization of neuropil in the gracile fasciculus. The Journal of Comparative Neurology. 10.1002/cne.21785.

Featured Reagent
Neurokinin-1 (NK 1) Receptor

Other Reagents to Consider:
Neurokinin-1 (NK 1) Human (RA25003)
Neurokinin-3 (NK 3) (RA25002)
Substance P (GP14103)
proNeurokinin B (RA25008)
All Neuropeptides
All Pain and Inflammation

Saturday, September 13, 2008

ELISA techniques and protocols

Power Point of ELISA Methods and Protocols(pps - 1.4M)
This teaching guide covers the three major types of ELISA: indirect, competitive, and sandwich. It integrates theory with practice, to help you understand what you are doing, and help you to do it!

Courtesy of our friends at Novus Biologicals.


Thursday, September 11, 2008

Ischemia, Inflammatory Response and Umbilical Stem Cells

We would like to send Kudos to Dr. Yan Xu and his colleagues at University of Pittburgh for their findings on inflammatory response in Golbal Ischemia. Their work was recently published:

Aaron Hirko, Renee Dallasen, Sachiko Jomura, Yan Xu. Modulation of Inflammatory Responses after Global Ischemia by Transplanted Umbilical-Cord Matrix Stem Cells. Stem Cells First published online August 21, 2008; doi:doi:10.1634/stemcells.2008-0075

Secondary to Cardiac Arrest is Brain Damage do to lack of blood flow. This is marked by a delayed loss of Neurons in CA1 hippocampus region of the brain due to inflammatory response.

The story timeline of this response is good then bad with interesting twists. The delay in neuronal loss is linked to initial inflammation. It involves both reactive astrocytes (astrocytosis) and glia. Delaying the loss is, of course, good.

...But then, the reactive astrocytosis and related glial scarring cause a physical and biochemical barrier to regeneration of neurons...a bad thing. Protecting the microglia is a good thing, because they these cells serve as scavengers for clearing the cellular debris. They can also secrete a variety of cytotoxic and protective chemicals.

The wow factor in this research is that implanted rat umbilical-cord matrix (RUCM) cells can provide partial protection against neuronal injury in rat brains. Rats treated with RUCM cells three days prior to an 8-min CA had only 25-32% neuronal loss in the hippocampal CA1 region compared to the typical 50-68% neuronal loss observed in the untreated or the vehicle-treated animals. This could be due to to the favaorable modulation of the "good-bad" inflammatory response.

The good news in the search for therapies for stroke and cardiac arrest victims is combined, stem-cell-like RUCM cells offer protection against neuronal injury after global cerebral ischemia by enhancing the survivability of the astroglia in the selectively vulnerable regions.

We are pleased that the research team used our GFAP antibody as an marker for astrotytic in their studies.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Neurotoxicity Testing

We combine our expertise in providing fresh and healthy:

E18 and E20 Rat Primary Neuronal Tissue -NEURON CULTURES

E18 Rat Primary Neuronal Tissue - ASTROCYTE CULTURES

E18 Mouse Neuronal Tissue -NEURON CULTURES

E18 Mouse Neuronal Tissue -ASTROCYTE CULTURES

AND Apoptosis Research Reagents

to help researchers more effectively study Neurotoxicity.

Images: Polycaspase Assay Kit, green was used to assess cell death in primay rat hippocampal neurons.Cells were plated on 25-mm poly-l-lysine-coated coverslips at 300,000 cells per coverslip. Cells were used at 4 or 8 days in vitro. Composite imagae (A) 3 out of 4 cells are apoptotic (green). No cells were necrotic as both of the PI-positive cells were FLICA-positive; they had compromised membranes and were probably in the late stages of apoptosis rather than necrosis. (B) 3 Caspase-positive cells fluoresce green.