There is nothing like a bit of recognition to energize your efforts, right? Promega was recently awarded the 2019 Distinguished Performer: Sustainabilityaward, as one of the Deloitte Wisconsin 75 awardees.
This award is not so much a feather in our cap, as fuel for our sustainability fire both in Madison, and globally. Here are a few details on the award and why Promega was chosen.
Standing, walking, running. When was the last time you gave your skeleton a second thought? How about when that car barely missed you in the parking lot? Or a deer ran in front of you? Maybe you just missed a car door opening on your bike ride today?
Your bones were involved in your response to that sudden shock/surprise, but not the way you think.
You may have jumped, swerved or hit the brake pedal (congratulations on the excellent reflexes) and yes, bones were involved in all of those actions. But a new article in Cell Metabolism reveals that bone is the essential component in initiation of that response.
The review “Kinase Inhibitors: the road ahead” was recently published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. In it, authors Fleur Ferguson and Nathanael Gray provide an up-to-date look at the “biological processes and disease areas that kinase-targeting small molecules are being developed against”. They note the related challenges and the strategies and technologies being used to efficiently generate highly-optimized kinase inhibitors.
This review describes the state of the art for kinase inhibitor therapeutics. To understand why kinase inhibitors are so important in the development of cancer (and other) therapeutics research, let’s start with the role of kinases in cellular physiology.
This past May (2019) the symposium “Psychedelic Therapy in Society: Exploring the Mechanisms of Action and Delivery of Care” was hosted by the International Forum on Consciousness at the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center on the Promega Madison Campus.
Having the good fortune to work across the street at Promega, I was able to attend this two-day conference and learn from leading researchers in psychedelics and about their use in therapy.
My interest in psychedelics is relatively new. I didn’t experiment with these substances during high school or college years. But in recent years, I’ve seen a close relative struggle with profound anxiety related to terminal disease, and another with substance abuse and depression. The lessons learned from each experience is that the battery of medicines used to treat such illness can result in additional problems for which there are currently not good medication options. And in some cases, traditional medications can cause further health problems. Continue reading “Psychedelics as Therapeutic Agents: Current Research, Potential Benefits”
The cause of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is not well understood. What is known is that in T1D, immune cells attack pancreatic islet cells that produce insulin. In addition, insulin is an autoantigen that activates T cells in diabetic persons.
A new discovery by Ahmed et al. could further T1D understanding. These findings are also setting B and T cell paradigms on their ear.
About B Cells and T Cells
Components of the B-cell receptor.Image by CNX OpenStax. Used with permission under Wikimedia Commons.
B cells (B lymphocytes) are part of the cellular immune response. They act by means of surface receptor molecules that are immunoglobulins. These B cell receptors are created by highly variable gene rearrangements that result in a huge variety of these surface immunoglobulin molecules. The beauty of B cell receptors (BCR) lies in the fact that, through random gene rearrangements comes a such large variety of B cell surface receptors, that any foreign antigen that makes its way into the body is recognized and snagged by a B cell receptor.
In my science blog research/writing, news reports are usually pulled from US sources. But interesting scientific research is obviously being conducted in many places around the globe. When this story from Namibia came along, there was so much I didn’t know. It was time to catch up.
Relief map of Namibia. Image by Natural Earth and Kbh3rd with permission under Wikimedia commons.
Namibia is Exactly Where in Africa?
Namibia is one of the world’s youngest countries, having gained independence from South Africa in 1990. Situated northwest of the country of South Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, Namibia is arid, composed largely of desert.
This blog is about research conducted at the Sam Nujoma Research Center, University of Namibia, on Henties Bay. Henties Bay (not shown on this map) is in the region of Erongo, located in the center of Namibia along the coast. Henties Bay has become a tourist destination in part due to the abundance of fish and marine life found there.
The Sam Nujoma Research Center of University of Namibia, located near Henties Bay.
The creamy colonies of C. auris look innocuous. Don’t be fooled. Photo by Shawn Lockhart – Centers for Disease Control, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54680002
Life in the 21st century is full of electronic devices and apps purported to make life easier. Many of us can binge watch movies, videos and news on our phones. There are wireless headphones, electric bicycles, self-operating vacuum cleaners, wine in boxes with taps—and so much more.
This life is, however, not without challenges.
In the event that you or yours ends up in the hospital, the stay could be complicated by an unplanned, unwanted and potentially lethal infection.
On March 13, 2019, a bomb cyclone hit Denver, Colorado. With this storm the Denver area experienced a 24 millibar (mbar) drop in atmospheric pressure in a 24-hour period. At about the same time, several cities in Colorado recorded >24 mbar drops in pressure, including a 35.6mbar drop reported at Pueblo, Colorado!
The intensity of the pressure drop indicates storm severity and this storm was a record-breaker for Denver and surrounding communities.
No location on planet Earth has gone unaffected by new extremes in weather. 2018 was the hottest year on record for countries on every continent. In the past 4 months we’ve experienced record-breaking rainfall and droughts, wildfires, high temperatures and snowfall.
Food for Climate Extremes?
Climate change news is sometimes so bleak as to be overwhelming. But good scientific research and climate change-ameliorating efforts are all around us—I was encouraged to read recently that simply changing what we eat can benefit the environment. There are better food choices available to most of us, no matter what diet or cooking style we favor. Continue reading “What’s for Dinner? Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time”
Michael Curtin, Promega, accepting the Reviewers’ Choice for Drug Discovery and Development Product of the Year award from SelectScience.
As announced at SLAS in Washington, D.C. recently, we are excited to have NanoBRET Target Engagement (TE) Intracellular Kinase Assays awarded the SelectScience Reviewers’ Choice for Drug Discovery and Development Product of the Year 2019!
PROTACs or Proteolysis-Targeting Chimeras are an emerging tool in protein degradation studies, potentially suited to any need involving the removal of a specific protein. These small-molecule chimeras are exciting due to: 1) their target specificity; and 2) their ability to enable target destruction versus target inhibition.
Destruction/Inhibition: Is There a Difference? An analogy that microbiologists (and wrestlers or anyone that has ever spent time in a locker room shower) would understand, is fungicidal versus fungistatic compounds. A fungicidal compound kills fungus. A fungistatic compound just slows the fungus down a bit.
A small-molecule inhibitor attaches to its target protein, but for how long? What inhibitor testing must be done to determine how long the inhibition lasts?
On the other hand, a small-molecule agent that causes protein degradation first targets the protein of interest, then attaches ubiquitin to that target. Once a protein is marked with ubiquitin, it’s a dead man. E3 ligase must be involved, but if the ubiquitin is added by E3, the end is near. Next stop, Hades.
This ubiquitinated protein is headed to the proteasome and proteins that go there don’t come back. Ubiquitination was called the ‘molecular kiss of death’ when this discovery was awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2004.
PROTAC components: target protein ligand, E3 ligase and linker.
About PROTACs PROTACs are degrader molecules composed of three parts: 1) a ligand that is specific for the target protein; 2) a ligand for E3 ligase; and 3) a linker molecule that connects the two ligands. The E3 ligase is one of three enzymes that can add ubiquitin to a cellular component, but only ubiquitins added by the E3 ligase cause targeting to the proteasome (Zoppi et al.).
