Selected category: Immunology

Rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and celiac disease are familiar examples of autoimmune disorders that occur when the immune system attacks healthy cells or tissues by mistake. Myasthenia gravis is a far rarer autoimmune disease, causing weakness in the skeletal muscles. LAB Maastricht UMC+ in the Netherlands has a long history with myasthenia gravis, using gold standard immunoassays to enable accurate diagnosis and provide the information necessary to allow effective treatment.

Extracellular HMGB1 has been implicated in a wide range of conditions, from trauma and sepsis to epilepsy and lupus. As a result, this almost ubiquitous biomolecule is garnering increasing interest as a potential target for new therapeutics. In a recent review paper, Prof Ulf Andersson et al. summarized the latest advances in our understanding of the release, receptor interactions and functional consequences of extracellular HMGB1.

Many people in the life science and medical communities will never have heard of HMGB1 or, to give it its full title, high mobility group box 1 protein. Despite this, it is the most common nuclear protein after the histones – with around a million copies per cell – and plays a key role in the body’s response to everything from trauma and infection to a stroke and heart attack.

The Monash Antibody Technologies Facility (MATF) in Victoria, Australia, has added a new dimension to its high throughput service, off ering screening for antibody functionality. This time-consuming phase is crucial for many projects, and can now be outsourced to MATF, where comprehensive and fl exible automation completes testing in a fraction of the time.