Apoptosis detection methodology is an ever evolving science. The caspase family of cysteine proteases plays a central role in this environmentally conserved mechanism of regulated cell death. New methods that allow for the improved detection and monitoring of the apoptosis-assoc ...
Caspase activity assays in multi-well plate formats represent powerful tools for understanding experimental modulation of the apoptotic response. These assays are configured to exploit functional, biochemical, and temporal differences in substrate specificity and sele ...
Multiplexed assay chemistries provide for multiple measurements of cellular parameters within a single assay well. This experimental practice not only is more cost efficient but provides more informational content about a compound or treatment. For instance, multiplexed casp ...
Protein degradation is mediated predominantly through the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway. The importance of the proteasome in regulating degradation of proteins involved in cell-cycle control, apoptosis, and angiogenesis led to the recognition of the proteasome as a therape ...
Caspases are central to the execution of apoptosis. Their proteolytic activity is responsible for the demise of cells in many physiological and pathological states. Great advances in understanding caspases have been made using recombinant caspase expression and enzymatic chara ...
Here we describe a simple protocol that uses positively charged nylon membrane dot blot to profile miRNA expression. A library of 515 antisense oligodeoxynucleotides of human and mouse mature miRNAs was synthesized and spotted on GeneScreen Plus membrane using a dot-blot equipment. To ...
The extrinsic apoptosis pathway is activated when certain members of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor superfamily (TNFRSF) are oligomerized by their cognate ligands that are members of the TNF superfamily (TNFSF). The apoptosis-inducing capacity of a member of the TNFRSF reli ...
Twenty-five years ago, Georges K�hler and C�sar Milstein invented a means of cloning individual antibodies, thus opening up the way for tremendous advances in the fields of cell biology and clinical diagnostics (1). However, in spite of their early promise, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were l ...
As a consequence of the invention of the hybridoma technology by K�hler and Milstein (1), many monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) have been evaluated in clinical trials since the early 1980s. Clinical outcomes were generally poor (2–5), with the notable exception of marked tumor responses, inclu ...
Conventionally, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) are generated by fusing B cells from an immunized animal with myeloma cells from the same species (1). Several murine MAb have already been employed for in vivo diagnosis and therapy, including Ber-H2 which recognizes the human CD30 molecule wi ...
For over a century now, antibodies have proven to be extremely useful reagents in biomedical research. They are also being tried as therapeutic agents for a number of intractable diseases. Their uses include identification and cloning of new genes from expression libraries, purification ...
In this chapter we describe efficient procedures for the construction, expression and screening of comprehensive libraries of human Fab antibody fragments displayed on the surface of filamentous phage. Phagemid vectors are used for placing randomly paired light (L) and heavy (H) chain ...
The discovery of the process for making rodent monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) 26 years ago by Kohler and Milstein has led to a revolution in the treatment of over 50 major diseases, and has borne an industry whose products today represent 6% of total biotechnology sales. The full potential of this indus ...
Chronic inflammation is induced by various infectious/infected agents and by many physical, chemical and immunological factors. Many malignancies arise from areas of infection and inflammation. Reactive oxygen species and reactive nitrogen species are considered to play the k ...
Genetic instability is a hallmark of human cancers. It is the driving force for tumor development as it facilitates the accumulation of mutations in genes that regulate cell death and proliferation and therefore promotes malignant transformation. Chronic inflammation is a common und ...
Current dogma suggests that the positive correlation between obesity and cancer is driven by white adipose tissue that accompanies obesity, possibly through excess secretion of adipokines. However, recent studies in fatless A-Zip/F-1 mice, which have undetectable adipokine lev ...
NF-κB plays a pivotal role in immunity and inflammation and is considered to be a promising candidate for drug development. However, global suppression of NF-κB may have undesirable side-effects. Our data and the results of others suggest that each of the five NF-κB subunits may have a specific fun ...
It is now apparent that epigenetic abnormalities, in particular altered DNA methylation, play a crucial role in the development and progression of human cancers. DNA hypermethylation at promoter CpG islands is now recognized as a third mechanism by which inactivation of tumor suppress ...
Global gene expression profiling studies conducted over the last couple of years have shown that molecular profiling of breast cancers can be used to identify clinically and genetically significant subtypes of breast carcinomas and subgroups of patients with different prognosis or ...
Nitric oxide (NO) is a free radical that is involved in the inflammatory process and carcinogenesis. There are four nitric oxide synthase enzymes involved in NO production: induced nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), endothelial NO synthase (eNOS), neural NO synthase (nNOS), and mitochondrial ...

