Sigma BioBlogs

Here’s what we’ve been hearing:

• If an antibody doesn’t work, I want a refund
• I want more data for an antibody before I buy it
• I can’t find the antibody I need.

Our antibody team has your answers!

With our Bioguarantee, you will have peace of mind in your antibody purchase. If you need extra data to support your antibody research, we have Prestige Antibodies ® powered by Atlas Antibodies, providing immunohistochemistry, Western Blot, and immunofluorescence, data for 10,000 antibodies to human targets taken from the Human Protein Atlas Project.

And, now with over 40,000 primary antibodies derived from a variety of species, we are sure to have the antibody you need. Find your antibody today or just browse our collection with the Antibody Explorer Search Tool You can also search by the gene or biological system you work with, using Your Favorite Gene.

Hear more about these solutions from Tracey Harshberger, Antibody Product Manager for Sigma Life Science.

5 years.  Plasma from 7,000 participants.  180 potential biomarkers.

Will it be enough to gain a greater understanding of the genetics and biological pathways of heart disease?  We hope so.

Sigma® Life Science recently announced plans to work with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and Boston University on a project to evaluate potential biomarkers of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD).

The development of antibody reagents targeting CVD biomarkers will expand the growing portfolio of over 38,000 monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies that Sigma Life Science currently offers, supporting the research that will lead to methods for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of CVD.

It is a tall order to fill, so where do we stand now?  What are the current biomarkers for CVD?

Rho kinase (ROCK) may be part of the list for evaluation.  Drug Discovery Today recently published an article highlighting Rho-kinase inhibition as a potential treatment method for cardiovascular diseases.

Identified as downstream targets of Rho, ROCKs are involved in a number of signaling pathways that impact cellular functions such as proliferation and gene expression but evidence is mounting that ROCKs also play a role in vascular inflammation.

Progressive inflammation of the arterial wall is a trademark sign of atherosclerosis and ROCK expression levels are elevated in both animal and human lesions (view ROCK1 Protein Expression data in YFG) that were studied.  ROCK has also been shown to upregulate a number of pro-inflammatory molecules such as NF-kB and IL-6 (You can see everything that interacts with ROCK in it’s Interaction Network. Click the lines between the molecules to see the relationship details).

Is ROCK the main effector of arterial inflammation and could an inhibitor be a viable treatment option?  Current studies are in place to determine if ROCK inhibitors can be used to treat a number of arteriosclerotic diseases such as atherosclerosis, stroke and heart failure as well as several smooth muscle cell (SMC) disorders such as asthma and glaucoma.

What biomarker targets will be next?

We recently showed you where to find the wealth of IHC data available from Human Protein Atlas Web portal.  Now you can listen to Dr. Fredrik Ponten, the Vice-program Director of Human Protein Atlas Project describe an antibody-based proteomics strategy to identify cancer biomarkers using Human Protein Atlas data.  Just click on our latest webinar, “Antibody-based Biomarker Discovery in Cancer Research”

The strategy combines high-throughput generation of mono-specific antibodies with protein profiling in human tissues and cells using immunohistochemistry (IHC) on cell and tissue microarrays (TMAs).  Dr. Ponten covers the development and validation of Prestige Antibodies® powered by Atlas and explores the use of these antibodies in the search and characterization of biomarkers related to cancer.

The webinar concludes with a brief overview of Your Favorite Gene Powered by Ingenuity given by yours truly.
I also recommend Kyle’s video if you want the highlights of this powerful research tool.

Speaker:  Dr. Fredrik Ponten, Professor, Uppsala University and Vice-program Director, Human Protein Atlas Project

Sigma Biobloggers are web-nerdy. When we saw over 700 IHC images available on every single antibody Human Protein Atlas investigates…we went on super WEB NERD ALERT.

HPA publishes the Immunohistochemistry data profiled across normal tissue, cancer cells and cell lines for free to everyone.

IHC image in normal spleen for Anti-ADCY10: Cat. No. HPA015243

Then Sigma Life Sciences works with Atlas Antibodies to make Prestige Antibodies^® available to everyone.

On YFG you can search for a protein, gene, or other molecule, by pathway, function, disease, etc. etc.
Here we’ll use Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR)
You see to the right all the data that’s available. To find the HPA antibodies with buckets of data, click “Antibodies”.

Here we have many many  antibodies associated with EGFR.  Then, thanks to HPA and Atlas, we have a select group of antibodies tested for activity in normal and cancer tissues.

Find these on the Product page designated by a Product # starting with the letters “HPA”

Click on it…and you have IHC images from HPA showing the binding activity of  Antibody HPA018530 .

If you need to review the normal tissue expression across the board or the data on cancer cell lines and tissues…click on the link “Human Protein Atlas characterization data”

Dig into the data here.

Enjoy your fun IHC data treats.  We surely do.

Keep looking and you will also find some ImmunoFluorescent data, and Western Blots.

It’s with great pride that we tell you Sigma Life Science is Where bio Begins.

To quote our VP of Marketing, Dr. Helge Bastian…“We want to help life science researchers address their research challenges and are committed, more than ever to support them on their way to new and revolutionary discoveries.”

Over the past decade, Sigma Life Science has built a repertoire of products and technologies to support the biological researcher. Part of our commitment to biology is to share our knowledge and resources with you.

If you’ve been following us over the last 30+ days, you have noticed that we are using social media as a means to get to know the biological community at a whole new level. We’ll continue this trend here. As we go forward look to sigmabioblogs.com for the skinny on new techniques, improving old techniques, exciting applications, war stories from technical services, and information about scientists from all over the bio community.

Here is a video of our President, Dave Smoller, to tell you the details.

Watch the video and then check out our great tools and techniques listed below.

• Targeted Genome editing
• Knock out research models
• Custom oligo services
• Biomolecules including antibodies and small molecules
• Reprogramming tools for stem cell research
• siRNA and shRNA’s for gene knockdown
• Biological search tool

Thanks for talking to us. We are having fun and hope you are too.

Welcome to Sigma Life Science. This is Where Bio Begins.