Efficient tools to enable drug target and biomarker discovery

Adeno-associated viral vectors are essential tools for delivering gene therapy to patients and are usually manufactured using plasmid-based approaches. However, there are challenges with working with plasmids on a large scale, including consistency and scalability.

Cardiac excitation-contraction coupling is the process by which electrical excitation drives cardiomyocyte mechanical shortening. Following membrane depolarization, calcium influx through voltage-gated calcium channels triggers calcium release from intracellular stores. Increased cytosolic calcium binds to troponin, allowing sliding of actin thin filaments against myosin thick filaments. This results in myocyte contraction. Cytosolic calcium extrusion and sequestration induces myofilament relaxation, readying the cardiomyocyte to begin again. Understanding this tightly regulated process, as well as how perturbations disrupt it, is critical to understanding heart function and dysfunction.

The movement towards value-based healthcare has provided a platform for a better future for all involved in the health ecosystem. However, amongst the multitude of value initiatives, the clinical laboratory has largely been left to play a secondary role. Despite its core value principles of data, timely and efficient diagnosis, and patient centricity, the lab has been relegated to near-commodity status. This is also indicative of a broader problem: a fragmented value chain that underexploits sources in decision-making, at a time when the health world’s stated focus is on outcomes.

T cell receptors (TCRs) allow the adaptive immune system to recognize and respond to a vast array of threats, ranging from viruses to malignant cells. Single-cell sequencing has made it possible to explore an individual’s TCR repertoire and quantify changes due to an immune response. To fully unlock the great potential of these measurements we need to know which antigens each TCR binds.