Articles

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    Improving Antibody Purification for Veterinary Medicine
    Article
    Dogs and humans suffer from many common ailments, including cancer, degenerative joint disease, and atopic dermatitis. Antibody-based therapeutic options for these conditions offer hope for human patients, but translating human-centric approaches verbatim to veterinary medicine is rarely feasible. For example, Staphylococcus aureus-expressed protein A (SpA) strongly binds human immunoglobulin G (IgG), making it very useful for purifying therapeutic antibodies. However, it poorly binds most canine IgGs. Aiming to accelerate antibody-based therapeutic development in veterinary medicine, scientists from Hokkaido University demonstrated that the SpsQ protein expressed by the related bacterium Staphylococcus pseudintermedius can be used instead for canine antibody development.1
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    Control Line Systems for Lateral Flow Assays
    Article
    Lateral flow tests consist of a test line and a control line. The control line provides validation of a functioning test. If the control line does not appear after running the test, that test is deemed invalid. The choice of a control line antibody will depend on which detector antibody is used in the test.
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    Lateral Flow Assay Tests for Detecting Drugs of Abuse
    Article
    Drug molecules are small and if directly striped on a membrane, they would “sink” into the sponge-like matrix of the nitrocellulose membrane. Consequently, drug molecules are conjugated to a carrier protein such as Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) (most common), Bovine thyroglobulin (BTG), and even ovalbumin. The carrier protein part of the conjugate binds to the membrane and exposes the drug for the antibodies to “find”. In most drug tests, the drug BSA conjugate will be on the capture or test line and the antibody to that drug or its metabolites is bound to a detector particle such as gold nanoparticles or colored latex beads.
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    Identifying a Novel Biomarker of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
    Article
    Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a chronic, progressive autoimmune disease, where ducts that transport bile within the liver and between the liver, gallbladder, and intestines become narrowed due to inflammation and fibrosis.1 The resulting accumulation of bile within the liver damages the tissue and ultimately leads to organ failure. Clinicians use non-specific testing including imaging, liver biopsy, and serum biochemical assays to diagnose patients with PSC.1 Moreover, patients with other liver diseases exhibit overlapping symptoms, which makes it difficult to differentiate between the diseases and correctly diagnose the patients. Clinicians require PSC-specific biomarkers to improve diagnosis, and researchers from Kyoto University have identified a potential diagnostic biomarker, anti-integrin αvβ6 autoantibodies.2
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    Lysis buffers: RIPA vs. NETN
    Article
    Cell lysis is a critical step for many different types of molecular and cellular assays. These assays rely on solubilizing cellular material like proteins or DNA for analysis, and the quality of the assay performed is based on the efficiency of the extraction of these materials. With multiple lysis buffers to choose from, how do you know which is right for you? Here, we focus on two frequently used lysis buffers RIPA (RadioImmunoPrecipitation Assay) and NETN.