The Skin Microbiome & Cosmeceuticals Congress presentation slides
Posted 24th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
Following the Skin Microbiome & Cosmeceuticals Congress: Europe, we have made the following presentation slides from Richard Andrews, Ingmar Claes, Marie Drago & Maya Ivanjesku available.
Assessment of the European Court of Justice ruling on gene editing for crop improvement
Posted 21st June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
Anyone involved in the field of agriculture and biotechnology would have been unable to ignore the ECJ ruling on case C-528/16 in July 2018. The ruling confirmed that all plants obtained by any form of mutagenesis are GMOs as defined by Directive (EC) no. 2001/18 and rejected an annulment of mutagenesis exemption (Annex IB of Directive 2001/18. With significant ramifications across the industry, the ECJ stance on gene edited crops and GMOs was a major focus of the 7th Plant Genomics & Gene Editing Congress: Europe.
Strategic screening enables effective biomarker discovery
Posted 19th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
During my eight years at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, I led a protein technologies group. We developed a protein expression library, and then high-content protein arrays. In total, we made arrays with 10,000 different human proteins.
Flow Cytometry: A powerful tool in drug discovery
Posted 17th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
Flow cytometry is a powerful tool in drug discovery because it provides a way to understand the drug’s mechanism of action. In order to stratify a better target for patients, you often need to know where the drug is working, and what kind of pathway it is operating along.
A novel fungal endophyte confers fitness benefits to crops
Posted 14th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in Spain, in collaboration with scientists with PlantResponse Biotech, S.L., are conducting research on a novel fungal endophyte that confers crop fitness benefits, particularly in alkaline soils.
Why do biomarkers fail?
Posted 12th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
When conducting an experiment to identify biomarkers, it is crucial to design the experiment properly. 80-90% of all biomarker populations for the last 20 years have not and cannot be reproduced, and the main reason that biomarkers fail is that these experiments are not designed properly. In this post, I will outline two ways in which experiments are poorly designed, and then outline the technological and methodological solution in a later blog.
Putting the power of proteomics in the hands of Flow Cytometry
Posted 10th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
The combination of simplicity and power is turning flow cytometry into the highest throughput protein analysis method yet developed.
Large-scale protein analysis, or proteomics, is still a relatively small discipline where the research front is driven by a few labs with unrestricted access to mass spectrometry (MS). MS is equivalent to a mainframe computer: very big, very sophisticated, and only a few people have the skills to use them.
A 14 colour antibody panel: developing a tool and demonstrating a process
Posted 7th June 2019 by Joshua Broomfield
One of the frustrations I have with Flow Cytometry is when companies present their amazing new findings at conferences, and it’s quite often about TMB cells. In my case, I work on these cells perhaps 20% of the time. The rest of the time I work on cells from other parts of the human body – bone marrow, lung, bronchoalveolar lavage, spleen – and in diverse animals such as mice, rats, and even sparrow, chicken, and mosquito.
