Snapshots Live Cytokines & Growth Factors

1. Snapshots Live Cytokines & Growth Factors June 11, 2003

2. Agenda • Introduction • Cell- and Protein-Based Assays • Microarrays • Conclusions

3. Cytokines & Growth Factors • Diverse roles in development and disease • Study includes receptors as well as cytokine and growth factor ligands • Many different molecule families and family members Introduction

4. Most Frequently Studied Molecules Introduction

5. Most Popular Assays Introduction

6. Key Requirements • Signal-to-noise • Detection equipment • Sensitivity • High-throughput Critical Issues • All product categories – species selection • Antibodies – use with fixed tissues • Immunoassay kits – shelf life • Recombinant proteins – molecule selection Cell- and Protein-Based Assays Cell- and Protein-Based Assays

7. Microarray Formats Used in RNA-Based Assays Microarrays

8. Genemed Biotechnologies Sigma-Genosys 1% Perkin Elmer Life Sciences 2% Mergen 2% OriGene Technologies 1% 1% Genomic Solutions Radius Biosciences 2% 1% MWG Biotech TaKaRa Biomedical 3% 1% Affymetrix Amersham 37% Biosciences 6% Agilent Technologies 6% BD Biosciences Clontech 8% Other SuperArray 20% 9% Sources of Microarrays for Cytokine Research Microarrays

9. Conclusions • Cytokine researchers study a wide diversity of molecules and species; off-the-shelf assay kits and reagents are often hard to find. • Growth inhibition/proliferation, ELISA and real-time PCR are the most popular assays for cytokine and growth factor research. • Microarray users identified difficulty with data interpretation, specificity and sensitivity as the most common problems encountered.