Exposures to hazardous airborne particles can pose a significant health risk to those routinely exposed in ambient air and industrial work environments. Measuring chemical composition and concentration of aerosol particles is important to preventing worker exposures and protecting health.
Mesothelin (MSLN) is an antigen highly expressed in several human cancers including mesotheliomas, ovarian cancers and pancreatic cancers. As such, human MSLN (hMSLN) is a target for many anti-cancer drugs. Most therapeutics targeting hMSLN do not recognize the mouse isoform of MSLN (mMSLN) and therefore cannot be tested in mouse cancer models.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) seeks parties to license software for modeling the targeted delivery of anti-cancer agents in solid tumors.
The software models the permeability and concentration of intravenously administered antibody anti-cancer agent conjugates in solid tumors. The models can be used to determine optimal dosing regimen of a therapeutic in a particular cancer type. Thirty factors that affect delivery rates and efficiencies are analyzed as variables in generating the models.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed an improved insect cell line, Tni-FNL, derived from the cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni. The Tni-FNL cell line is capable of high level expression of heterologous proteins using baculovirus-based expression systems. When compared to commercially available cell lines used for the same purpose, the Tni-FNL cell line often outperforms those for protein expression. These cells have a high growth rate and are capable of growth at a lower temperature.
The National Cancer Institute’s Protein Expression Laboratory seeks parties to co-develop dual luminescent/fluorescent cancer biomarkers.
In research settings, visualization of tumors or tumor cells is often done using either bioluminescence or fluorescence. However, both of these methods have shortcomings: bioluminescence is not sensitive enough to sort individual tumor cells, and fluorescence cannot be used effectively to view internal tumors and is best used with surface tumors.
The degradation of archival surgical and biospecimen limits the utility of many biomarkers that may have prognostic or predictive significance in guiding a patient’s therapy. Previous methods at preventing the degradation of RNA and proteins in formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue blocks & slides have no protective benefit.
Cancer diagnosis is based on the assessment of patient biopsies to determine the tumor type, grade, and stage of malignancy. The proliferative potential of tumors correlates to their growth and metastasis. Visually identifying and quantifying mitotic figures (MF) in cancer biopsy tissue can be used as a surrogate for proliferative activity in tumors.
Researchers at the NCI Radiation Oncology Branch and NIH CIT Center for Molecular Modeling developed a tetrahydroxamate chelation technology that provides a more-stable Zr-89 complex as an immuno-PET cancer imaging agent. In either the linear or the macrocyclic form, the tetrahydroxamate complexes exhibit greater stability as chelating agents compared to Zr-89 complexed to the siderophore desferrioxamine B (DFB), a trihydroxamate, which represent
The successful development of new cancer therapeutics requires reliable preclinical data that are obtained from mouse models for cancer. Human tumor xenografts, which require transplantation of human tumor cells into an immune compromised mouse, represent the current standard mouse model for cancer. Since the immune system plays an important role in tumor growth, progression and metastasis, the current standard mouse model is not ideal for accurate prediction of therapeutic effectiveness in patients.
The National Cancer Institute seeks interested parties to co-develop transgenic mice having immunocompetent rat growth hormone-firefly Luciferase-enhanced green fluorescent protein.