Not only does 2012 bring us the US Presidential Election, the Olympic Games and the Year of the Dragon (as well as a certain notorious date in the Mayan calendar), it is of particular significance to Proteintech Group for another reason entirely…

The year 2012 marks Proteintech’s tenth year of business, and though not on quite the same scale as those other events it is pretty big news for the team here. It is expected that 2012 will not pass us by quietly and we have a lot of events planned for the coming year to make sure it doesn’t. (If you have signed up to our newsletter alerts all will be revealed very soon!)

For this month’s newsletter I was asked to write an article on 10 things Proteintech can look back on and celebrate, looking a little further beyond its entry into double-figures.

With over 10,000 antibodies in the Proteintech catalog to chose from, and (just under) 10 years of their featuring publications to examine, I had my work cut out for me – let’s see how I got on…

And the winners are…

Marcksl1 – “Starter for Ten” Award (First Proteintech Sale)

CSTF1 – Breakthrough Performance Award (First Proteintech Antibody in a Publication)

FUS- Best Newcomer

SMN2 – Best in a Supporting Role

TDP-43 – Neuroscience Star

FKBPL – Oncology Star

LIN28 – Stem Cell Star

IFT88 – Rising Star Award

FAK – A Millennium Milestone

IDH1 – An Honorary Mention

(Alternatively, you can view the awards in our awards gallery by clicking one of the images below.)

So how did I do?

Did I miss any obvious ones? Could your work featuring a Proteintech antibody blow any of the above out of the anniversary water? If so,I want to hear about it; get in touch by commenting below or emailing me at Europe@ptglab.com. Remember, any work published featuring a Proteintech antibody is rewarded with a free pre-made antibody of your choosing!

Western blot showing Marcksl1 in mouse brain lysate labelled with Antibody 10002-2-AP

This one’s an award for the history lovers and marks (or should that be Marcks?) the first sale of a pre-made antibody – which came in May 2002 with a vial of our Marcksl1-targeting polyclonal IgG (10002-2-AP).  Marcksl, also known as MacMARCKS, is a member of the MARCKS family of specific protein kinase C (PKC) substrate that binds both calmodulin and actin. It is phosphorylated during phagocyte activation, neurosecretion, and growth factor-dependent mitogenesis and is thought to integrate PKC and calcium/calmodulin-dependent signals in the regulation of actin cytoskeleton dynamics [Ref].

This antibody has since featured in publications in Clinical and Experimental Metastasis, reporting up-regulation of Marcksl1 in Estrogen Receptor α positive breast cancer cells, and Experimental Cell Research, finding that intergrin β3 overexpression leads to the transcriptional downregulation of Marcksl1 protein expression. We sold a number of vials of 10002-2-AP in 2011 worldwide so are hopeful that more publications will follow these over the next couple of years.

Related antibodies: Marcksl1 rabbit polyclonal - 10002-2-AP, Phospho-Marcks rabbit polyclonal - 10018-3-Ap

Cover photo The EMBO Journal 1st September 2003 (volume 22, number 17), representing cell-to-cell movement of RNA silencing in plants. (via http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal)

The first research paper to feature a Proteintech antibody appeared in The EMBO Journal on September 1^st 2003. It reported on work done at Oxford University, UK investigating the production of the 3’ ends of pre-snRNAs (small nuclear RNAs). Our CSTF antibody (10064-2-AP) was of several used to identify known RNA cleavage factors bound to synthetic RNA substrates containing the 3’ box of the human U1 or U2 snRNA genes. The antibody successfully identified the 50kDa subunit of cleavage stimulation factor (CSTF) encoded by the CSTF1 gene.

The EMBO Journal paper ultimately describes the RNA processing activity of the 3’ box of snRNAs in the absence of transcription – a feature of the 3’ box that had not been demonstrated previously.

Related Antibodies: CSTF1 rabbit polyclonal antibodies - 10064-1-AP and 15537-1-AP

For some time, a debate as to whether FUS (fused in sarcoma) causes neurodegenerative disease independently of TDP-43 or not has been underway. To help out this discussion, Proteintech developed a monoclonal FUS antibody (60160-1-Ig) to further distinguish the presence of FUS in pathological protein inclusions. You can find out what frontotemporal dementia (FTD) pathology expert Linda Kwong had to say on the antibody in this article.

IF result using FUS (60160-1-Ig) from the paper "FET proteins TAF15 and EWS are selective markers that distinguish FTLD with FUS pathology from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with FUS mutations" courtesy of Manuela Neumann.

I’ve included this FUS monoclonal in our celebratory list as I expect big things from this antibody in the field of neurodegenerative research in 2012 and beyond. Since it is such a new addition in terms of the 10 years Proteintech has been operating, I have dubbed it “Best Newcomer”.

More on 60160-1-Ig: FUS antibody in recent ALS/FTLD breakthrough, What’s all the FUS about?

Other FUS antibodies and articles: 11570-1-AP, Star Antibody – October 2010

Read our interview with SMA Foundation Director Dione Kobayashi by clicking the link in the article.

With the help of our SMN2 antibody, scientists at the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Foundation, New York have developed a sandwich ELISA kit that measures the level of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein from blood serum samples. The researchers behind the kit utilized Proteintech’s SMN antibody (11708-1-AP) in the developmental process. It is hoped that this sandwich ELISA kit will aid research into SMA treatments. Currently there are no cures for SMA, only palliative care for this degenerative and debilitating disease caused by the loss of motor neurons in a specific region of the spinal column.

Dione Kobayashi, first author on the paper reporting the ELISA kit’s development, sheds more light on SMA and this antibody in this month’s scientist interview.

More on SMN2 11708-1-AP: Interview with Dione Kobayashi,  Our SMN Antibody in Spinal Muscular Atropy Development, Peptide Antigen- Versus Protein Antigen-Generated Antibodies.

Related articles: 60154-1-Ig,  Human SMN2 Monoclonal Antibody  Successful in Recent Validation Experiments

"Modeling the Mind": The cover of Science Magazine October 6th 2006 Photos: Rob Melnychu/Getty; Matthias Kulka/Corbis (taken from sciencemag.org)

Staying with the subject of neuroscience and neurodegenerative disease for the moment, no top ten Proteintech list would be complete without our TDP-43 polyclonal antibody (10782-2-AP). The main reason for this of course is this antibody’s involvement in the original identification of TDP-43 as the “mystery” ubiquitinated protein aggregate in a proportion of FTD and ALS cases. This novel finding was published in Science in 2006 and this particular TDP-43 antibody remains a particular favorite amongst neurodegenerative disease researchers, featuring in over 300 publications to date!

More on 10782-2-AP: A look a TDP-43, TDP-43 Antibody Features in Recent Publication in Brain, Proteintech TDP-43 Antibody Proves An Effective Tool in FTLD and ALS Research, Star Antibody – August 2010

Immunohistochemistry of paraffin-embedded breast cancer using FKBPL antibody 10060-1-AP (viewed under 40x lens)

Our winner from the field of oncology is  FKBPL polyclonal antibody (10060-1-AP), used by the lab of Professor Tracy Robson at Queens University Belfast. The Robson group is finding ways to sensitize tumors to existing therapies such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. With the help of our FKBPL antibody the Robson group has shown that high FKBPL levels in breast cancer indicate a good response to tamoxifen and a better chance of survival. Past interviewee and Robson lab member Hayley McKeen has informed us that the group had recently obtained MRC funding to assess FKBPL protein expression in patient sample types, hoping that this analysis could lead to a diagnostic test.

More on 10060-1-AP: Interview with Hayley McKeen, Catching up with Hayley McKeen and FKBPL Research  (a follow-up interview),  Star Antibody – July 2010, FKBPL Antibody Successes in Steroid Receptor Signaling Research

Confocal immunofluorescense analysis of human embronic stem cells labelled with 11724-1-AP at dilution of 1:400 and a phycoerythrin (PE) conjugated secondary antibody. (Viewed with 20X objective). Figure contains lab annotation.

I’ve voted LIN28 (11724-1-AP) our stem cell star antibody as it is one of our best in this area and is often used as a stem cell marker (see image). It first appeared in a publication featuring in Nature Genetics in 2009, describing how LIN28, and homolog LIN28B, block let-7 microRNA (miRNAs) precursors from being processed to mature miRNAs, suggesting that their overexpression might promote malignancy through repression of let-7. The authors Viswanathan et al. also showed that LIN28 and LIN28B are overexpressed in approximately 15% of primary human tumors and human cancer cell lines.

Related articles:  LIN28 in Recent Nature Genetics Paper, Interview with Shi-Jiang Lu, Interview with Zoher Kapacee, Recent LIN28 Antibody Successes

Our IFT88 antibody (13967-1-AP) targets intraflagellar transport protein 88 which is required for primary cilium biogenesis. Despite being around for a few years now, this antibody has recently attracted a high amount of interest after featuring in a string of high-profile publications including Nature Genetics and Cell.  This surge of interest, I think, correlates with the rapidly expanding area of primary cilia research; it seems these cellular structures, once considered vestigial organs of our evolution, play fundamental roles in cell signaling and sensing of the cellular environment. Furthermore, it is now clear that signaling pathways depending on the integrity of this structure, such as hedgehog and Wnt, play roles in a growing number of diseases; mutations in the IFT88 gene itself have been associated with polycystic kidney disease. Our previous interviewee Professor Jeremy Reiter explains more about the importance of primary cilia here.

Immunofluorescence results from the lab of Jeremy Reiter, showing acetylate tubulin (left, green in merge) IFT88 labelled with 13967-1-AP (center, red in merge) and DAPI stained nuclei in merge (right) - With permission

Related articles: Cilia Research – Interview with Jeremy Reiter, Antibodies Relating to Primary Cilia Research

Western blot showing FAK in Jurkat cell lysates labelled with antibody 12636-1-AP

Whilst our antibodies have featured in over 2,500 publications so far, I think our FAK antibody (12636-1-AP) deserves a mention here as it secured the 1000^th such appearance of a Proteintech IgG. The paper appeared in Nature Cell Biology, and was another study looking at the biology and pathology of microRNAs (miRNAs). FAK – encoding the protein focal adhesion kinase – is a host gene to an miRNA called miR-151, and the two are often expressed together. The authors of the Nature Cell Biology paper found that a certain variant of miR-151, miR-151-5p, significantly increases hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell migration and invasion in vitro and in vivo. In addition they found that miR-151 can function synergistically with FAK to enhance HCC cell motility and invasion of surrounding tissues.

More on FAK: Proteintech News – May 2010,

Related articles: VEGF signaling pathway launched