20 Years of Organ Transplant Testing with Maxwell® Instrumentation

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva
MacKenzie Gartner, Lead Technologist at DCi, operates a Maxwell® instrument.
MacKenzie Gartner, Lead Technologist at DCi, operates a Maxwell® instrument.

For twenty years, the transplant lab at Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCi) in Nashville, TN has depended on Maxwell instruments for their automated nucleic acid purification. In fact, the lab was the first to purchase the instrument when it debuted in 2005. Today, they’ve scaled up to three of the latest Maxwell® Instruments.

“They’re great little instruments,” says Christina Sholar, Clinical Supervisor at DCi. “I think this is our third generation, and we still have the original in the basement. We love them.”

Christina’s lab runs critical tests to ensure compatibility between donors and recipients for solid organ and stem cell transplants. With precious samples and urgent demands, they need tools they can depend on for high-quality results. Their Maxwell® instruments help them ensure successful downstream analysis to support important clinical decisions.

Precious Samples, Urgent Timelines

A DCi lab technician adds a sample to a cartridge before loading the Maxwell® instrument.
Hailey, a technician at DCi, loads a Maxwell® cartridge.

Founded in 1971 as a non-profit dialysis clinic, DCi now supports a broad spectrum of kidney health issues, including transplants. The company has also expanded its operations to support organ transplants through federally designated organ procurement organizations. Christina’s lab runs the tests to ensure compatibility between donors and recipients.   

“We cover the state of Tennessee,” Christina says. “We do the typing and antibody analysis for solid organ transplants, and then we follow them post-transplant to see if they’ve developed antibodies to the donor. We also do stem cell workups and follow-ups.”

The lab processes 150-200 samples per week. In addition to managing the high sample throughput, the team also must be available 24/7 for urgent calls when an organ donor passes away.

“We used to average about 50 donors a month, but that’s creeping up,” Christina says.

Christina says her team needs a workflow built for speed and minimal hands-on processing. With downstream assays including NGS and qPCR, they also need to trust they’ll have a high-quality DNA sample to work with. That’s what led them to the Maxwell platform in 2005.

Instrumentation for Easy, Reliable Results  

“Maxwell purifications are an easy thing to start new employees with, because they can get quality DNA very easily,” says MacKenzie Gartner, Lead Technologist in Christina’s lab at DCi. “Techs pick up on it very quickly, and it’s something they can feel confident in doing by themselves.”

Twenty years ago, the lab was using manual methods to purify all their nucleic acids. Unlike MacKenzie, Christina remembers those days and admits they weren’t fun. The protocols were labor-intensive, and much more prone to human error. Now, they don’t even teach manual methods anymore.

The DCi lab currently operates three Maxwell® instruments.
The DCi lab currently operates three Maxwell® instruments.

“When I came on nine years ago, they were teaching a manual method as backup for the Maxwell instruments, but they never got around teaching it to me because it was needed so rarely,” MacKenzie says. “Now it’s not even in the training materials.”

MacKenzie works hands-on with the Maxwell instruments almost every day. The lab mainly uses the Maxwell® Buffy Coat DNA Kit and Maxwell® Buccal Swab DNA Kit. Buccal swabs require 20 minutes of passive pre-processing, but buffy coats can be added directly to the Maxwell cartridges. From there, the automated protocol is only 45 minutes.

“It’s nice that both of them can be run on the same instrument, which gives us flexibility knowing that all three instruments can be available no matter what we’re doing,” MacKenzie adds.

One of the lab's original Maxwell® instruments, still in storage in the basement.
One of the lab’s original Maxwell® instruments, still in storage in the basement.

Christina says the Maxwell instruments provide much cleaner DNA eluates than their past manual methods. This is invaluable for lab efficiency, but it’s even more important with stem cell testing.

“With stem cells, they may only send one tube but want three or four different tests,” she explains. “We don’t have room for error – those samples are precious.”

“We keep the instruments pretty active,” MacKenzie adds. “That room constantly has their little noises going. But they’re so dependable – they don’t take much maintenance, and we can count on having one available even when we get some urgent samples from a donor.”

Long-Term Partnership for Success

“Promega is probably our favorite company to work with, as far as support goes,” Christina says. “We rarely have issues, but when we do, we get great responses very quickly.”

As a leader, Christina values strong relationships with her suppliers. Though the lab’s sales representative has changed a few times over the past two decades, she says each one has been reliable and helpful in keeping the lab operations running smoothly. The lab has also benefited from regularly scheduled preventive maintenance visits from Promega service engineers.

“Overall, I just love how dependable the instruments are,” Christina says. “We’re using them all the time. They’re truly our workhorses.”

All photos credit: DCi

Targeting Epigenetic Regulators in Cancer: The Promise of BET and HDAC Inhibitors

Posted on by Promega

This blog was written in collaboration with Tian Yang, Associate Product Manager at Promega.

Cancer is often driven not only by genetic mutations, but by changes in how genes are turned on or off—epigenetic alterations. Two key players in this space are bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) proteins and histone deacetylases (HDACs).

BET proteins help activate gene expression by recognizing acetylated lysines on histones, while HDACs remove these acetyl groups, repressing transcription. When these mechanisms become dysregulated, they can promote tumor growth or silence tumor suppressors.

To counteract this dysregulation, researchers have developed inhibitors that target BET proteins and HDACs. While combinations of these drugs have shown synergy, using two separate compounds introduces challenges with dosing, toxicity and pharmacokinetics. Recent efforts have focused on designing multitarget inhibitors—single molecules that can simultaneously block BET and HDAC activity.

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5 Questions to Ask When Your RT-qPCR Isn’t Working

Posted on by Shannon Sindermann
RT-qPCR

RT-qPCR (reverse transcription quantitative PCR) is a powerful technique for quantifying RNA expression—but it doesn’t always cooperate. Even when you’ve followed the protocol carefully, unexpected results can appear: flat curves, unexpected Cq values, or inconsistent replicates. When that happens, you’re left wondering… what went wrong?

In this blog, we’ll walk through five key questions to help you troubleshoot RT-qPCR issues with confidence. From common errors to more stubborn challenges, we’ll also explore what to consider when technique isn’t fully the problem—and when it might be time to rethink your reagents.

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Drug Target Confirmed? Tivantinib’s Lesson on the Importance of Cellular Target Engagement

Posted on by Promega

This guest blog post is written by Tian Yang, Associate Product Manager at Promega.

There are often challenges with translating results from a test tube into a living system, demanding more physiologically relevant assays. In drug discovery, demonstrating a compound’s ability to modulate its target protein in live cells is a critical step in the hit-to-lead workflow. A variety of cell-based assays can be used to assess a compound’s activity in live cells. Take kinase inhibitors as an example, these assays can range from substrate phosphorylation assays that more directly report on the activity of target kinases, to genetic reporter assays or cell viability assays that assess the downstream effects of target modulation.

In the case of Tivantinib, several pieces of data from its development were used to establish its role as an inhibitor of MET kinase. MET Kinase is a prominent target for anti-cancer therapeutics due to frequent MET dysregulation in a wide range of tumors. For example, over-activation of MET drives cancer proliferation and metastasis. In the initial report on Tivantinib, in addition to biochemical activity assays performed with purified MET, the activity of Tivantinib in cells was verified by several methods, including: 1) inhibition of phosphorylation of MET and downstream signaling pathways, 2) cytotoxicity in cancer cell lines expressing MET, and 3) antitumor activity in xenograft mouse models (1). Additionally, a co-crystal structure of the MET-Tivantinib complex was solved, seemingly confirming that Tivantinib is a bona fide MET inhibitor capable of engaging MET in live cells (2). Based on these observations and other pre-clinical data, Tivantinib appeared to be a promising drug candidate and was taken through phase 3 clinical trials targeting cancers with MET overexpression. However, Tivantinib ultimately was not approved as a new therapeutic, failing to show efficacy in these phase 3 clinical trials (3,4).  

Within three years of the initial publication on Tivantinib, two separate articles challenged the mechanism of action in Tivantinib-induced cytotoxicity of tumor cells (5,6). Authors for both articles showed that Tivantinib can kill both MET-addicted and nonaddicted cells with similar potency. Both articles also concluded that perturbation of microtubule dynamics, instead of MET inhibition, is likely responsible for the cytotoxicity observed with Tivantinib. Considering the failed clinical trials and uncertainties regarding the mechanism of action, one may wonder if the original pre-clinical work adequately determined if Tivantinib effectively binds and inhibits MET in cells? If Tivantinib’s cellular engagement to MET was assessed directly rather than by MET phosphorylation analysis, would a different pre-clinical recommendation have been made?

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Avoid the Summertime Blue-Greens— Know about Cyanobacteria Before You Hit the Water

Posted on by Kelly Grooms
Warning sign reading "ALGAE BLOOM – NO SWIMMING" posted in a lake with visible green algae floating on the water's surface, surrounded by lily pads and aquatic plants under a clear blue sky.

The weather is warming up (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). There is nothing more refreshing on a hot summer day than a dip in cool lake waters, so people everywhere are digging out their swimsuits and hitting the beach. Unfortunately, the same warm temperatures that drive us to the beach can also cause a potentially deadly overgrowth of blue-green algae —also called harmful algal blooms (HABs)—in the water of our favorite pond or lake.

Continue reading “Avoid the Summertime Blue-Greens— Know about Cyanobacteria Before You Hit the Water”

IL-6/STAT3-Regulated Long Non-Coding RNA Is Involved in Colorectal Cancer Progression

Posted on by Michele Arduengo, PhD

Researchers from Wenzhou Medical University in China have identified a mechanism involving long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) that contributes to colorectal cancer (CRC) progression. CRC is the third most common cancer worldwide and is one of the most lethal cancers across the globe. Understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie the development and progression of CRC is critical to developing biomarkers to detect it and new therapeutics to treat it. 

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Accurate and On-Time: A Look Inside Promega Logistics

Posted on by Promega
Packages move through Kepler Center
Each week, thousands of parcels are shipped to customers from Kepler Center in Madison, WI.

We’re all used to the convenience of online ordering, whether it’s a last-minute birthday gift or a phone charger delivered overnight. That same ease and speed is what scientists expect when ordering critical reagents for their work. At Promega, we get that. That’s why we pledge: You’ll get what you need, when you need it.

For customers in the United States, any order received by 4:00 pm will be delivered the next day. We measure our success in honoring this pledge using a metric called “order fill rate.” Our global order fill rate is consistently above our benchmark of 94.5%, sometimes passing 98%.

But how does that actually happen? With thousands of orders leaving our warehouse every week, it takes more than just good intentions. Here’s a look behind the scenes at how our teams deliver on that promise.

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Understanding Wnt Signaling Through β-Catenin Localization in Live Cells

Posted on by Anna Bennett

The Wnt/β-catenin pathway, long studied in the context of developmental biology, has become increasingly recognized for its role in a wide range of human diseases. Its dysregulation has been implicated in cancer, fibrosis, immune modulation, and neurodegenerative conditions—making it a clinically actionable target across diverse therapeutic areas1. In this blog, we cover the fundamentals of Wnt/β-catenin signaling, highlight ongoing research efforts to understand its role in disease, and show how combining live-cell imaging with luminescent assays complements functional studies.

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Augmenting Human Capabilities with AI Tools

Posted on by Promega

We hear a lot of stories about AI tools helping people complete tasks more quickly, or automating menial or redundant tasks. However, Promega isn’t just interested in speeding things up. We’re focused on leveraging AI tools to help us do things better. All over the organization, employees are leveraging large language models (LLMs) and machine learning systems to accomplish things that weren’t possible before, or to make their work more effective against their goals.

Three employees shared their recent successes, including strengthening supervisory skills, scaling up production processes and training new team members. Each of these examples uses AI in a unique way, while still elevating human expertise, creativity and decision-making.

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What’s Hiding in Your Mussels? 

Posted on by Shannon Sindermann
mussels

Fresh mussels might be a delicacy in many parts of the world, but a new study from Italy suggests they could also be carriers of something much less appetizing: infectious viruses and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Published in Food and Environmental Virology, Venuti et al. (2025) investigated 60 mussel batches originating from the Campania (Southern Italy), Lazio and Puglia regions—and what they found raises important questions about food safety and environmental monitoring. 

Continue reading “What’s Hiding in Your Mussels? “