Proteintech Group was established by experienced research scientists aiming to provide their fellow research community with superior antibodies and first-class customer service. In essence, they strive to be a better antibody company. Proteintech is a company based on superior science; 95% of their antibodies are raised against whole protein antigens, producing all-purpose antibodies that recognise your protein of interest in any application. Furthermore, they make every single antibody that they sell, employing the immunological expertise of the scientists at every step of the production process. This not only gives us complete control over production but quality, validation and distribution as well.

The STIM1 antibody: helping to understand STIM1 function in both health and disease

STIM1 and Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is a chronic disorder that leads to the death of neurons and causes severe cognitive disability and dementia. Mutations in Presenilin-1 (PSEN1), Presenilin-2 (PSEN2) and amyloid precursor protein (APP) lead to familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD). Disturbances in Ca² homeostasis and CCE have been demonstrated as one of the early pathological changes in cells of FAD patients. To date, the molecular mechanism underlying FAD-related disturbances in CCE has not been resolved. However, the recent discovery that STIM1 and STIM2 are regulators of CCE sheds new light on this issue. Bojarski et al out to assess whether the expression of STIM proteins depends on presenilins and , if so, whether STIM1 and STIM2 are involved in CCE alterations observed in FAD. Their experiments show that both cellular levels of STIM proteins and CCE are influenced by presenilins, which suggest that STIM1 and STIM2 may play a role in presenilin-dependant alterations of CCE in Alzheimer's disease.

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Their SMYD3 antibody has been used to investigate the effects of SMYD3 over-expression and knockdown in human breast cancer cells.

SET and MYND domain-containing protein 3 (SMYD3) is a histone methyltransferase that plays an important role in transcriptional regulation and is involved in cancer cell proliferation. Its over-expression has previously been shown to affect cancer cell viability, adhesion and migration, indicating SMYD3 may be a novel therapeutic target against the metastasis of human cancers. A recent publication uses Proteintech's SMYD3 rabbit polyclonal antibody (12011-1-AP) to show SMYD3 down-regulation can induce G1-phase cell cycle arrest, revealing its decrease as a potent apoptotic trigger in breast cancer cells (PMID: 20957523). Further studies involving this protein are hoped to facilitate the development of strategies to prevent the progression of the cell cycle in breast cancer cells.

A recent study in Molecular Carcinogenesis uses ourNUDT6 (FGF-AntiSense) antibody to investigate celladhesion and cell-cycle progression in Seg-1 cells (lungcarcinoma).

In their latest study, MacFarlane and Murphy (PMID:20945415) use Proteintech's NUDT6 antibody (11181-1-AP) to further investigate its relationship with basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2) and cancer progression. The role of NUDT6 in cancer progression has been less clear than FGF-2, which is associated with increased tumor recurrence and is involved in many processes such as proliferation, differentiation, angiogenesis and migration. It has been noted previously that elevated NUDT6 levels have a protective effect in patients with FGF-2 dependent esophageal carcinoma. Both proteins are located on the 4q26 region of the human chromosome, a site of frequent gain or loss of DNA in a variety of cancers, including: pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma, esophageal adenocarcinoma, heptocellular carcinoma and brain and bladder tumors.

This current study demonstrates that NUDT6 and FGF-2 are inversely expressed at different points of the physiological cell-cycle. Furthermore, reduction of either protein was found to upregulate expression of the other, affecting different stages of cell-cycle progression and cancer aggression; for instance, NUDT6 reduction was associated with higher invasive activity of the Seg-1 human lung carcinoma cell line. This work indicates that NUDT6 and FGF-2 have a regulatory relationship with one another and sheds light on the protective effects of NUDT6 expression in FGF-2 dependent cancers.