Uncovering Leukemia Therapies with Single-Cell CRISPR Screens

Pooled knockout screening with CRISPR-Cas9 has revolutionized drug discovery and has evolved to become the backbone of many drug discovery pipelines. Though powerful in its own right, pooled CRISPR screening is often restricted to measuring a single phenotype such as proliferation or cell survival or simple phenotypic changes, such as measurement of changes in a single gene’s activity through the generation of a reporter cell line.

Liquid biopsy, utilizing blood as a less invasive alternative for tissue samples, is becoming more and more prominent in precision medicine. The possibility to analyze blood samples across the species matrix makes mass spectrometry-based proteomics a powerful tool for early-stage, translational, and clinical research.

Multiple challenges exist in bioanalytical assay development, from antibody generation to quality control. A researcher must first decide if an analyte will be measured in all or only certain desired forms, identify the sample types or matrices in which it will be measured, and identify the appropriate sensitivity and specificity required of their assay. The role of the antibody (i.e., capture, detection, or reagent), as well as its required format, must also be identified. Lastly, the generated antibodies must be characterized and validated in terms of supply continuity, robustness, reproducibility, and stability. In this webinar, Dr. Royle addresses these challenges and discusses specific antibody generation using Bio-Rad’s HuCAL technology, format flexibility offered by SpyTag technology, antibody formats for different bioanalytical assays, and quality and performance of Bio-Rad antibody products.

While the race for the first clinical NASH approval intensifies, preclinical research continues to be limited by multiple factors. There is no ideal preclinical NASH model, naturally recapitulating both the long term metabolic and liver fibrosis components of NASH, and existing clinical tests are not translatable to rodent models.