General

Bringing Industry-Relevant Lab Experience to Undergraduate Life Sciences Majors with MyGlo®

Posted on by Promega

When Dr. Rebecca Miles retired from her 25-year career in pharmaceutical research at Eli Lilly, she refocused her passion for science on a new challenge. Having worked her way from the bench to Senior Director, she knew first-hand the technical skills required to successfully advance genetic medicine programs. Now, she leverages her industry experience and the latest technologies at Taylor University, a liberal arts institution in Indiana known for its strong emphasis on education and practical training for students’ future careers. As a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology, Dr. Miles trains her students to develop real-world skills and provides them exposure to technologies that impacted her own career. “I wanted to redesign the lab so that students could come out of the semester with some job skills if they wanted to be a technician in a lab,” she explains.

Dr. Rebecca Miles undergraduate class with their MyGlo®

Teaching Students Modern Technologies

Dr. Miles structures her lab courses to incorporate techniques that scientists would routinely use in an industry setting. Students learn cell culture, plating, luminescent assays, and data analysis in ways that mirror the workflows used in biotech and pharmaceutical labs. She encourages her students to analyze their raw data to learn how the calculations work. “I want the students to calculate it in Excel and do it themselves and see the standard deviation,” she says.

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Compact Design, Big Impact: Tridek-One Therapeutics Leverages MyGlo® to Accelerate Discovery of Immunomodulating Treatments

Posted on by Promega

In today’s biotech landscape, speed and precision are essential. For Tridek-One Therapeutics, a Paris-based spin-off from INSERM founded in 2018, these qualities drive their mission to develop first-in-class CD31 checkpoint agonist therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. By leveraging CD31’s ITIM motifs to modulate ITAM signaling, their approach targets immune cells selectively, reducing the risk of broad immunosuppression.

Operating in a biotech incubator with limited space and shared equipment, the team—including Trang Tran, PhD, Preclinical Research Director, and Guillaume Even, Senior Laboratory Technician—depends on luminescent assays requiring both sensitivity and precise timing. Relying on a shared plate reader often delayed extracellular ATP assays that needed rapid measurement. Walking between lab spaces and potentially waiting for access to the plate reader was not feasible.

Tridek-One needed a dedicated, reliable luminometer that could support their time-sensitive workflow and fit into their small lab space. That’s when Tridek-One discovered the MyGlo® Reagent Reader, Promega’s compact, portable 96-well luminometer and transformed their workflow. Even noted that, when they first tried MyGlo®, they “directly saw the power of this small machine.” Tran and Even found that MyGlo®’s performance and sensitivity were comparable to more expensive multi-mode readers, which gave them confidence in choosing MyGlo® as a reliable and cost-effective solution. Because they prefer to use 96-well microplates, MyGlo® fit their experimental setup perfectly.

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Top 5 Luciferase Reporter Vectors You Didn’t Know You Needed (But Now Can’t Live Without) 

Posted on by Simon Moe

Ever spent your Friday night troubleshooting a cloning reaction that just won’t work? 

We’ve been there. So have thousands of other scientists. That’s why Promega and Addgene teamed up to create something game-changing: a curated collection of 600+ luciferase reporter vectors, designed to help you skip the cloning and get straight to the data. 

Addgene, the nonprofit plasmid-sharing platform trusted by researchers worldwide, and Promega, a global leader in luminescent assay technologies, have joined forces to make your gene expression, pathway analysis, and cell signaling experiments faster, easier, and reproducible. 

In this post, we’re spotlighting 5 standout vectors from the new collection that are making life in the lab a whole lot better. 

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One Health in Action: Integrated Solutions for Animal Health Pathogens

Posted on by Promega

For research use only

Introduction: Diagnostic Innovation for Zoonotic Threats

When a veterinarian detects influenza A in pigs, they’re not just protecting a herd; they’re helping safeguard public health through broad ongoing surveillance.

To support rapid, biosafe detection of Influenza A viruses (H5N1, H3N2, H1N1) in animal populations, Promega and Longhorn Vaccines and Diagnostics have partnered to create a workflow that doesn’t require BSL-3 containment. It’s scalable, field-ready, and designed with One Health in mind.

This work is part of our broader commitment to enabling real-time disease surveillance—across species and borders. Together with Longhorn, we’re building molecular diagnostics that meet the moment, and the future.

Want the technical details? Read the press release. 

Why It Matters: Influenza A and Diagnostic Bottlenecks

Influenza A viruses—including highly pathogenic strains like H5N1—pose a dual threat to animal health and human safety. Yet despite the urgency, many surveillance and research efforts stall at the lab bench. Why? Because working with zoonotic pathogens often requires high-containment (BSL-3) facilities—especially when dealing with real-world samples like cow milk, poultry swabs, or pig oral fluids.

To help overcome this barrier, Promega and Longhorn set out to design a complete diagnostic workflow that does more than just detect. It needed to:

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What Drives Muscle Fiber Shifts in Obesity and Type ll Diabetes?

Posted on by Kari Kenefick

Skeletal muscle is the body’s main consumer of glucose derived from food.

Muscle Fiber Types
Skeletal muscle is composed of two types of muscle fiber: Type I (slow-twitch) and Type II (fast-twitch).
Type I fibers contract slowly and can maintain contraction over long periods of time. They are rich in mitochondria and myoglobin and are well vascularized. These fibers rely mostly on aerobic metabolism to make the ATP that fuels cells. Type I muscle fibers are fatigue-resistant and efficient—great for supporting posture, distance running, cycling and any activity that needs steady output.

Type II fibers contract quickly, produce more force and power, but also fatigue more quickly. They have fewer mitochondria and less vasculature and rely more on anaerobic pathways like glycolysis (using glucose without oxygen).

Type I muscle fibers are smaller in diameter and generate less peak force but excel at endurance and heat management. Type II fibers are typically larger, produce more force and speed and handle explosive tasks like sprinting, jumping or heavy lifting.

Most muscles are a mix of fiber types, and genetics sets the starting ratio of Type l to Type ll, but fibers are adaptable. With aging and disuse, Type II fibers tend to atrophy more, which is one reason that power declines faster than endurance.

Another distinction important for this story: Type I fibers are more insulin-sensitive than Type II fibers. Additionally, these fiber types differ in different body types.

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Measure Engagement to Target Proteins within Complexes: Why Context Matters

Posted on by Promega

This blog was written by guest contributor Tian Yang, Associate Product Manager, Promega, in collaboration with Kristin Huwiler, Manager, Small Molecule Drug Discovery, Promega.

For target-based drug discovery programs, biochemical assays using purified target proteins are often run for initial hit discovery, as these assays are target-specific, quantitative and amenable for high-throughput screens, allowing for precise characterization of target-compound interactions. However, proteins do not act in isolation inside the cells. Instead, proteins form complexes with other cellular components to drive cellular processes, signaling cascades, and metabolic pathways. Just as the interactions between a target protein and its binding partners can influence the target function, compound engagement with target proteins can vary depending on the protein complex formed.

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At the Forefront of Biologics Characterization: Insights from Promega R&D Scientists 

Posted on by Tera Madigan Ogorazalek

As biologics grow more complex, so do the tools required to understand, validate, and ensure their quality. From monoclonal antibody cocktails to antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and cell therapies, developers are navigating new frontiers in potency, purity, and functional characterization. 

Promega’s R&D scientists have been actively contributing to this evolving dialogue through respected industry platforms like BioCompare and BEBPA. Through ongoing collaboration with industry experts, Promega scientists are developing innovative assays and strategies that address the complex challenges of biologics development and quality assurance. 

This article highlights key takeaways from five recent publications featuring Promega experts and collaborators, with insights spanning from early research to quality assurance in manufacturing. 

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Cellular Selectivity Profiling: Unveiling Novel Interactions and More Accurate Compound Specificity

Posted on by Promega

This blog was written by guest contributor Tian Yang, Associate Product Manager, Promega, in collaboration with Kristin Huwiler, Manager, Small Molecule Drug Discovery, Promega.

Determining the selectivity of a compound is critical during chemical probe or drug development. In the case of chemical probes, having a clearly defined mechanism of action and specific on-target activity are needed for a chemical probe to be useful in delineating the function of a biological target of interest in cells. Similarly, optimizing a drug candidate for on-target potency and reducing off-target interactions is important in the drug development process (1,2). A thorough understanding of the selectivity profile of a drug can facilitate drug repurposing, by enabling approved therapeutics to be applied to new indications (3). Interestingly, small molecule drugs do not necessarily require the same selectivity as a chemical probe, since some drugs may benefit from polypharmacology to achieve their desired clinical outcome.

Selectivity profiling panels based on biochemical methods have commonly been used to assess compound specificity for established target classes in drug discovery and chemical probe development. Biochemical assays are target-specific and often quantitative, enabling direct measurements of compound affinities for targets of interest and facilitate comparison of compound engagement to a panel of targets. As an example, several providers offer kinase selectivity profiling services using different assay formats and kinase panels comprised of 100 to 400 kinases (4). However, just as biochemical target engagement does not always translate to cellular activity, selectivity profiles based on biochemical platforms may not reflect compound selectivity in live cells (5).

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Is Your Lab Environment Messing with Your Results? How to Spot the Signs Early

Posted on by Promega

This blog was contributed by guest Avi Aggarwal, 2025 summer intern at Promega.

If you’ve ever scratched your head over inconsistent experimental results, especially ones that seem to fluctuate for no obvious reason—you’re not alone. Sometimes the problem isn’t your pipetting, your reagents, or even your protocol. It might be the room itself.

Changes in temperature, humidity, or even invisible dust particles can quietly throw off your results. Something as simple as moving your thermocycler under an air vent or setting up a plate reader where sunlight hits it in the afternoon could cause subtle but significant issues.

Scientist removes samples from liquid nitrogen tank, affecting the immediate laboratory environment.
Any number of things can affect the laboratory environment, from opening a cryo tank to moving an instrument under an air vent.

Our Project to Learn How Subtle Environmental Changes Can Affect Sensitive Lab Equipment

We spent some time developing an environmental anomaly detection framework aimed at helping scientists understand how subtle environmental changes can affect sensitive lab equipment and experimental results. Our team set out to monitor real-world lab conditions using temperature and humidity sensors, including live testing with a GloMax® Discover platform and Sensirion SHT45 sensors. We also worked with open-source environmental datasets to simulate a variety of lab-like conditions, such as daily cycles, sudden temperature spikes, and slow humidity drifts.

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Unlocking the Power of Live-Cell Kinetics in Degrader Development

Posted on by Kelly Grooms

In targeted protein degradation (TPD), timing is everything. Understanding not just whether a degrader works—but how fast, how thoroughly and how sustainably—can dramatically influence early discovery decisions. Dr. Kristin Riching (Promega) dove into the real-time world of degradation kinetics in the webinar: Degradation in Motion: How Live-Cell Kinetics Drive Degrader Optimization, sharing how dynamic data provides a clearer view of degrader performance than traditional endpoint assays.

Whether you’re exploring your first PROTAC or optimizing a molecular glue series, the expertise offered in Dr. Riching’s presentation gives you actionable insights that will help you connect kinetic data to better therapeutic design.

3D visualization of a protein structure within a live-cell environment, highlighting the interaction site relevant to targeted protein degradation, set against a dark cellular background to emphasize kinetic dynamics.
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