In: Biosensors, 2018, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 1-15
Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDCs) are chemical substances shown to interfere with endogenous hormones affecting the endocrine, immune and nervous systems of mammals. EDCs are the causative agents of diseases including reproductive disorders and cancers. This highlights the urgency to develop fast and sensitive methods to detect EDCs, which are detrimental even at very low concentrations....
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In: Ebiomedicine, 2017, vol. 22, p. 44-57
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a severe and often fatal systemic malignancy. Malignant cells are capable of escaping host immune surveillance by inactivating cytotoxic lymphoid cells. In this work we discovered a fundamental molecular pathway, which includes ligand-dependent activation of ectopically expressed latrophilin 1 and possibly other G-protein coupled receptors leading to increased...
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In: Frontiers in immunology, 2019, vol. 10, p. 1594
Human cancer cells operate a variety of effective molecular and signaling mechanisms which allow them to escape host immune surveillance and thus progress the disease. We have recently reported that the immune receptor Tim-3 and its natural ligand galectin-9 are involved in the immune escape of human acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells. These cells use the neuronal receptor latrophilin 1...
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In: Oncotarget, 2015, vol. 6, no. 32, p. 33823-33833
The T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 3 (Tim-3) is a plasma membrane-associated receptor which is involved in a variety of biological responses in human immune cells. It is highly expressed in most acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) cells and therefore may serve as a possible target for AML therapy. However, its biochemical activities in primary human AML cells remain unclear. We therefore...
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In: International journal of environmental research and public health, 2015, vol. 12, no. 3, p. 2612-2621
The estrogen receptor protein (ER) can bind a vast number of organic pollutants widely spread in the environment and collectively known as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, EDCs. Its broad selectivity makes it an ideal bio-recognition element for the detection of EDCs. Here we describe the strategy and rationale for the design of ER based biosensors and assays that generate a signal in the...
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In: Biosensors, 2013, vol. 3, no. 4, p. 385-399
To date, different kinds of biosensing elements have been used effectively for environmental monitoring. Microbial cells seem to be well-suited for this task: they are cheap, adaptable to variable field conditions and give a measurable response to a broad number of chemicals. Among different pollutants, heavy metals are still a major problem for the environment. A reasonable starting point...
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In: Plos one, 2014, vol. 9, no. 7, p. e102658
In this manuscript, we modulate the binding properties of estrogen receptor protein by rationally modifying the amino acid composition of its ligand binding domain. By combining sequence alignment and structural analysis of known estrogen receptor- ligand complexes with computational analysis, we were able to predict estrogen receptor mutants with altered binding properties. These predictions...
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In: Plos one, 2013, vol. 8, no. 2, p. e55561
Antibodies play an increasing pivotal role in both basic research and the biopharmaceutical sector, therefore technology for characterizing and improving their properties through rational engineering is desirable. This is a difficult task thought to require high-resolution x-ray structures, which are not always available. We, instead, use a combination of solution NMR epitope mapping and ...
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In: International journal of molecular sciences, 2011, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 226-251
Antibodies play an increasingly important role in both basic research and the pharmaceutical industry. Since their efficiency depends, in ultimate analysis, on their atomic interactions with an antigen, studying such interactions is important to understand how they function and, in the long run, to design new molecules with desired properties. Computational docking, the process of predicting...
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In: Plos pathogens, 2018, vol. 14, no. 10, p. e1007335
Antibodies to the prion protein, PrP, represent a promising therapeutic approach against prion diseases but the neurotoxicity of certain anti-PrP antibodies has caused concern. Here we describe scPOM-bi, a bispecific antibody designed to function as a molecular prion tweezer. scPOM-bi combines the complementarity-determining regions of the neurotoxic antibody POM1 and the neuroprotective...
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