More and More OR Pubs

Potent, Proven and Frequently Published

Many labs have used our Opioid Receptor antibodies over the past 10+ years. We are grateful for the many publications and testimonals referencing successful use of these antibodies.

Here's a sampling of more recent publications: Wendy M. Walwyn, Wenling Chen, Hyeyoung Kim, Ani Minasyan, Helena S. Ennes, James A. McRoberts, and Juan Carlos G. Marvizón. Sustained Suppression of Hyperalgesia during Latent Sensitization by μ-, δ-, and κ-opioid receptors and α_2A Adrenergic Receptors: Role of Constitutive Activity. The Journal of Neuroscience, 6 January 2016, 36(1): 204-221; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1751-15.2016
...probed with antibodies to MOR (RA10104; Neuromics), p-Ser375-MOR (pMOR, RA18001; Neuromics) and p-Tyr416-Src family kinase (pSFK...serine-phosphorylated MOR (p-Ser375-MOR, RA18001; Neuromics) and a different MOR antibody (RA10104...
Jan Fraessdorf, Markus W. Hollmann , Iris Hanschmann, André Heinen, Nina C. Weber, Benedikt Preckel, Ragnar Huhn. Role of Endogenous Opioid System in Ischemic-Induced Late Preconditioning. Published: July 30, 2015DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134283.
...Antibodies for μ-OR and δ-OR were purchased from Neuromics (Minneapolis, USA)...
Ying-Biao Chen, Fen-Sheng Huang, Ban Fen, Jun-Bin Yin, Wei Wang and Yun-Qing L nhibitory effects of endomorphin-2 on excitatory synaptic transmission and the neuronal excitability of sacral parasympathetic preganglionic neurons in young rat. Journal Name: Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, ISSN: 1662-5102, Article type: Original Research Article,Received on: 02 Apr 2015, Accepted on: 12 May 2015, Provisional PDF published on: 12 May 2015.
... guinea pig antiserum against MOR (1:1000, GP10106, Neuromics, Edina, Minnesota, USA)...
Sherika N. Smith, Candler Paige, Kandy T. Velazquez, Terika P. Smith, Srinivasa N. Raja, Steven P. Wilson, Sarah M. Sweitzer. Injury-specific promoters enhance herpes simplex virus mediated gene therapy for treating neuropathic pain in rodents. doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2014.12.007
...: MOR (Neuromics, RA10104, 1:1000)...

Figure: MOR in primary sensory neuron and its terminals were decreased in neuropathic mice. (A, B) Western blot shows that MOR protein were markedly decreased in sciatic nerve (A) and hindpaw skin (B) on day 7 after nerve injury when compared with sham-operated mice. The ratio of MOR/GAPDH in sham mice was set at 1 for quantifications. Zhou et al. Molecular Pain 2014, 10:51 http://www.molecularpain.com/content/10/1/51

We will continue to post information on our ORs.

Why You Should Consider Culturing Your Cells in 3-D

2-D versus 3-D and meaningful outcomes

We have seen recent growth in our customers' demand for 3-D cell based assay solutions. This could be due to more the fact that these assays our proving to generate more in vivo like data.

Breast cancer cells, for example, grown in 2-D can easily be killed by low doses of chemotherapeutic drugs or low doses of radiation. If those same cells are grown in 3-D, they are resistant to the same doses of chemotherapeutic drugs or radiation, just like cancer as its found in the body. In this way, cells grown in 3D are more valid targets for testing and discovering new drugs to treat cancer. Another benefit of testing drugs in three dimensional cell culture versus two dimensional cell culture is that cells in 3D form multi-layers of cells whereas cells grown in 2-D form a monolayer of cells that is spread very thin on a plastic surface. When testing a drug in 2-D, it needs only to diffuse a short distance across the cell membrane to reach its intended target. In 3-D, the situation is more realistic and a drug needs to diffuse across multi-layers of cells to reach the cells on the inside of a microtissue.

Neuromics has a variety of options that will enable you to choose the best option(s) for your 3-D assays. These include:

• Collagel Hydrogels-New-Formulated using Type 1 Bovine, Human or Rat Collagen
• 3-D Nanofiber Solutions-Aligned Scaffolds, Randomly Oriented Scaffolds and Interactive Microenvironment System (IMEMS). 
• AlphaMAX3D-Potent three dimensional environment for cell culturing 
• AlphaGEL3D-Novel synthetic peptide hydrogel 
• Extracellular Matrix (ECM) Proteins-ECM proteins for cell culturing

Look for more posting on these important solutions.

Sleeping Beauty (SB) Transposon for the Study of Cancers

SB Gene Insertion vs Viral Based Methods

With the addition of SB Transposon Systems to our tool set. We have deep interest in how well SB works vs alternative methods. Here Dr. Hyun-Pyo Kim and team demonstrate how the SB Transposon system can be used for Novel Therapeutic Approaches for Various Cancer Types Using a Modified Sleeping Beauty-Based Gene Delivery System (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086324).

SB vs Viral Based Methods: "Successful gene therapy largely depends on the selective introduction of therapeutic genes into the appropriate target cancer cells. One of the most effective and promising approaches for targeting tumor tissue during gene delivery is the use of viral vectors, which allow for high efficiency gene delivery. However, the use of viral vectors is not without risks and safety concerns, such as toxicities, a host immune response towards the viral antigens or potential viral recombination into the host's chromosome; these risks limit the clinical application of viral vectors. The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon-based system is an attractive, non-viral alternative to viral delivery systems. SB may be less immunogenic than the viral vector system due to its lack of viral sequences. The SB-based gene delivery system can stably integrate into the host cell genome to produce the therapeutic gene product over the lifetime of a cell. However, when compared to viral vectors, the non-viral SB-based gene delivery system still has limited therapeutic efficacy due to the lack of long-lasting gene expression potential and tumor cell specific gene transfer ability. These limitations could be overcome by modifying the SB system through the introduction of the hTERT promoter and the SV40 enhancer. In this study, a modified SB delivery system, under control of the hTERT promoter in conjunction with the SV40 enhancer, was able to successfully transfer the suicide gene (HSV-TK) into multiple types of cancer cells. The modified SB transfected cancer cells exhibited a significantly increased cancer cell specific death rate. These data suggest that our modified SB-based gene delivery system can be used as a safe and efficient tool for cancer cell specific therapeutic gene transfer and stable long-term expression."

Figure 8. The effect of modified SB system on the tumor growth in vivo. Lung cancer cells (H358) (A), prostate cancer cell line (DU-145) (B), and ovarian cancer cells (OVCAR3) (C) were harvested by trypsinization, and 1×105 viable cells (as determined by trypan blue exclusion) in a total volume of 200 µl were injected subcutaneously. Two days following tumor seeding, animals were intravenously injected via tail veins with 100 mg/kg gancyclovir (GCV) along with either co-transfection of the empty plasmid (pT. hTp. Con) with the active helper plasmid (pCMV-SB) or co-transfection of the SB system (pT.hTp.HSV-tk.Con) with the active helper plasmid (pCMV-SB). Mice were sacrificed 28 days after tumor injection, and the effect of modified SB system on tumor growth was evaluated by measuring tumor size. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086324.g008

Neuromics, with our partner B-Mogen, has the capabilities to engineer custom SB Transposons for your Cancer Research. If interested, please contact me directly at 612-801-1007 or pshuster@neuromics.com. Our process is to first completely understand your unique requirements and from these, formulate a related statement of work with costs, timeline, milestones and deliverables. Thank you. Pete Shuster, CEO and Owner,

CRISPR-Cas9 and Sleeping Beauty Transposons

Neuromics-B-Mogen Approach

The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing approach is now officially considered a revolution. This is confirmed by the increasing frequency of this word being used across the web in describing this technique. In fact, it is now appearing in conference titles. see: Genome Engineering: The CRISPR/Cas Revolution 2016COLD SPRING HARBOR - 17 AUG 2016.

We have joined the revolution with our new Sleeping Beauty Transposon^TM Systems.

Figure: Sleeping Beauty TransposonTM Systems Gene Integration Process. (A) A depiction of Sleeping Beauty transposon plasmid and Sleeping Beauty transposase enzyme active in cellular nuclei. (B) Transposase enzyme binds to Sleeping Beauty-specific IR/DR sites. (C) Transposase enzyme excises transposon sequence from transposon vector. (D) Transposase enzyme stably integrates transposon sequence at TA site in host cell genome.

Features Include:

• Simple-"Cut and Paste" Integration and Editing. Check out our Sleeping Beauty Transposon System Users Manual 
• Potent-100% Stable with No Off target effects with the safest transposon insertion profile. 
• Fast- Transfect with our transposase + Sleeping Beauty Transposon Reporter Series Vectors. 
• Cost Effective- Starting at $329.

If you would like us to engineer custom Transposons or gene editing on your cells, please conatact me directly and we will work together to formulate a Statement of Work to your specifications. Pete Shuster, CEO and Owner, Neuromics, pshuster@neuromics.com or cell phone: 612-801-1007