science with elisa

It is well established that hormones are responsible for sending signals and delivering messages between organs. For example, in humans, the male reproductive system largely sends messages through testosterone, and oestrogen is the main messenger in the female reproductive system. However, what if molecules derived from food in the gut could also send messages to the male reproductive system?  The Gut Signalling and Metabolism group at the MRC LMS, led by Professor Irene Miguel-Aliaga, have been studying this in fruit flies ( Drosophila melanogaster ). They have found that in male fruit flies, the testes are able to send signals to their next-door neighbour, the gut, to increase the rate of sugar breakdown (carbohydrate metabolism). A product of sugar breakdown is a molecule called citrate, and research published by the group suggests that this citrate production sends messages to other parts of the body: specifically, to increase food intake and to produce mature sperm.  The group als

Scientists at the University of Western Australia have achieved the “impossible” (1) by combining morphology, immunophenotyping, and fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH), to create a single, novel method that promises to transform laboratory investigations for leukaemia.  Figure 1 – Simplified schematic diagram of immuno-flowFISH The ground-breaking invention, called “immuno-flowFISH”, uses an imaging flow cytometer to rapidly analyse more than 10,000 cells to detect chromosomal abnormalities in a chosen cell population [figure 1]. The method has been dubbed the “holy grail of leukaemia testing”(1), as it combines three established tests for leukaemia into a single automated, powerful platform with high sensitivity – which could potentially provide results for diagnosis, prognosis, and minimal residual disease monitoring in less than two days. The potential for its clinical application was shown during method development by Hui et al. (2), through the evaluation of chromosome 12 i

Increased understanding of disease biology and technological advancement has led to the existence of targeted therapies, such as JAK inhibitors (1, 2). Momelotinib is a novel JAK inhibitor currently being investigated for myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow cancer in which clonal proliferation of a haematopoietic stem cell eventually results in normal bone marrow being replaced with fibrotic scar tissue [figure 1]. Figure 1 – The aetiology, clinical presentation, and treatment of myelofibrosis  So far, data indicates that it could be a game-changer for this disease, in which prognosis is usually poor and treatment is often palliative. Due to its unique anaemia-alleviating mechanism, studies such as the SIMPLIFY-1 trial (3) have highlighted momelotinib’s astonishing potential in improving treatment outcomes for patients with myelofibrosis. There is currently a lack of safe and effective therapies that exist for this disease. Allogeneic stem cell transplants are the only way to cure myelo