Porvair Sciences has expanded its range of high quality, black microplates that minimise sample degradation by exposure to light, even over long storage periods.
Available in a choice of 48-, 96- and 384-well formats – the black plates are precisely manufactured to applicable ANSI / SLAS dimensions ensuring complete compatibility with almost all readers and automated equipment. Manufactured from polypropylene, the range of black microplates offer excellent heat and solvent resistant qualities. Using only ultra-pure grade polymer means that each black plate has near zero leachates ensuring long-term sample integrity. The black plates are supplied RNase / DNase free meaning they can be used to store the most sensitive biological samples. To prevent evaporation, hydration of DMSO solutions and to completely eliminate light from samples – Porvair Sciences additionally offers a selection of Absorb Max light blocking sealing films that may be applied to the top of the black plates. A split backing and edge cut-outs make positioning and applying the sealing film quick and simple. The light-blocking and absorbing properties of Porvair Sciences black microplates, used in conjunction with Absorb Max sealing films, provides a perfect combination for protecting light-sensitive assays or samples during storage.
For more information, visit: www.microplates.com/solid-bottom
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Horizon Discovery Group, a leader in the application of gene editing and gene modulation for cell line engineering, says its cGMP-compliant CHOSOURCE™ platform has played a key role in generating a stable cell line for the development of an immunotherapy for autoimmune diseases. Horizon’s pharmaceutical-grade, stable Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells delivered high yields of monoclonal antibody for LAG-3 immunotherapy, enabling Immutep and Batavia Biosciences to reach an important milestone in the preclinical development of the compound.
Horizon’s gene-edited Glutamine Synthetase (GS) knockout CHO K1 cell line expression system, offered by Batavia Biosciences as part of its STEP®-mAb service, was used to generate a high yielding cell line for Immutep’s IMP761 product candidate, an agonist antibody targeting the immune checkpoint lymphocyte activation gene (LAG)-3. LAG-3 controls the signalling between specific immune cells, T cells and antigen presenting cells, which are responsible for the adaptive immune response, making it a promising focus for novel cancer therapies or for the treatment of autoimmune conditions, such as inflammatory bowel diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.
Horizon’s GS expression system facilitates the development of stable cell lines for the expression of antibodies and other recombinant proteins and is recognized in the industry and by regulators as suitable for high yield biomanufacturing. Its CHOSOURCE biomanufacturing platform helps companies to move from the DNA sequence of their potential biotherapeutic to clinical manufacturing as simply and rapidly as possible. The platform is versatile and suitable for a broad range of monoclonal antibody therapeutics, delivering higher-than-anticipated yields of less commonly used IgG4-based antibodies, such as IMP761.
Terry Pizzie, CEO, Horizon Discovery said: “We are dedicated to ensuring availability of key technologies that can improve affordability of medicines worldwide. Our CHOSOURCE biomanufacturing platform is empowering organizations from early stage start-ups to large pharmaceutical companies to drive efficiencies throughout development and production and has already been utilized in multiple successful innovative new drug filings.”
The complete CHOSOURCE system includes the GS knockout CHO K1 cell line, a comprehensive package of supporting documentation, and an expression vector supplied under license from DNATwoPointO, Inc.
• For more information, visit: https://horizondiscovery.com/navigation/cho-cells
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Cardiac MyBP-C may be more useful than the gold standard biomarker cardiac Troponin I. Blood levels of the current gold standard cardiac biomarkers are very low during the initial stages of myocardial infarction (MI), making early diagnosis difficult. Plasma levels of MyBPC3 are significantly elevated in MI patients. MyBPC3 levels increase from baseline at 3 hours after MI and peak at 6 hours. This is faster than for Cardiac Troponin I which is normally detected 6-12 hours after the onset of MI. Cardiac MyBPC (cMyBP-C, MyBPC3) is a 140 kDa structural protein that is present only in the heart. It is phosphorylated by several kinases. Phosphorylation of MyBPC3 regulates myocardial function and confers resistance to proteolysis, preserving cardiac function post-myocardial infarction.  Dephosphorylation at Ser-273 and Ser-282 facilitates MyBPC3 degradation and release of a 40 kDa N-terminal fragment (C0C1f). This C0C1f fragment is pathogenic within cardiac tissue and it is released into the circulation. It was later established in vivo that the C0C1f fragment could cause cardiac dysfunction and heart failure. Importantly, it was shown that plasma MyBPC3 levels are significantly raised in humans with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy undergoing trans-coronary ablation of septal hypertrophy. The assay is validated for human serum and citrate plasma and shows excellent sensitivity (LOD 1.74 pg/ml).

BIOVENDOR
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Handheld electrochemical sensors are part of the daily routine for millions of people with diabetes around the globe who monitor their blood sugar levels with electric glucometers. While such sensors have revolutionized at-home medical testing for diabetics, they have not yet been successfully applied to diagnosing other conditions.
Sensors like glucometers detect glucose in blood based on the activity of an enzyme, and there are only a limited number of enzymes that can be used to sense biomarkers of human disease. An alternative detection strategy based on binding events between antibodies and their molecular targets have been investigated to expand the use of electrochemical sensors for medicine, but these sensors fall victim to the rapid accumulation of “fouling” substances from biological fluids on their conductive surfaces, which deactivate them. Existing antifouling coatings are difficult to mass-manufacture, suffer from quality and consistency issues, and are not very effective. Now, a new diagnostic platform technology developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University known as “eRapid” enables the creation of low-cost, handheld electrochemical devices that can simultaneously detect a broad range of biomarkers with high sensitivity and selectivity in complex biological fluids, using as little as a single drop of blood. The technology is described in Nature Nanotechnology.
“As long as an antibody exists for a given target molecule, eRapid can detect it,” said co-author Pawan Jolly, Ph.D., a Senior Research Scientist at the Wyss Institute. “By solving the biofouling problem with a simple yet robust design, we are now able to easily mass-produce biochemical sensors for a wide variety of applications at low-cost.” The team demonstrated the commercial utility of this approach by creating a multiplexed sensor with three separate electrodes, each coated with the BSA/gold nanowire matrix and a layer of antibodies against a specific clinically relevant target molecule: interleukin 6 (IL6), insulin, or glucagon. When they incubated the sensor with the respective target molecules in undiluted human plasma, they observed excellent electrical signals with picogramper- mL sensitivity. Conversely, electrodes coated with a published “PEG-SAM” anti-fouling coating failed to produce distinct signals, indicating that they had been irreversibly fouled by off-target molecules in human plasma samples. In addition, the BSA/gold-nanowire-coated sensors can be washed and reused multiple times with minimal signal loss, allowing serial monitoring of biomarkers easily and at low cost.
Since then, the Wyss team has been able to detect more than a dozen different biomarkers ranging from 100 Da to 150,000 Da in size with eRapid, and they are continuing to experiment with conductive nanomaterials to optimize the electrode coating and the system’s performance, as well as reduce the cost even further.
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