Lab Expectations

Some cancer cells adapt mechanisms to evade detection and destruction by the host's immune system. One way cells do this is by hijacking normal mechanisms of immune checkpoint control and modulation of the innate immune response via STING.

Cancer cells resist inhibitory signals that might otherwise stop their growth. The major pathways involved are Autophagy and Death Receptor Signaling (Apoptosis), both of which can ultimately lead to cell death, and reduction in tumor growth.

Cancer cells can revert to a pre-differentiated, stem-cell-like phenotype, allowing uninhibited cellular division and other metabolic adaptations that enable survival in adverse conditions.

In collaboration with Cell Press, we are excited to announce a new educational resource that will make it easier for biology students and researchers to navigate their careers, get published, and strengthen their laboratory skills to enable experimental success. That new resource is called Cell Mentor™.

Cancer cells stimulate their own growth, which means they become self-sufficient in growth signals, and no longer depend on external signals (like Epidermal Growth Factor EGF/ EGFR). Proliferation depends highly on these three important pathways: Akt, MAPK/Erk, and MTOR.

Cancer cells stimulate the growth of blood vessels to supply nutrients to tumors. Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing blood vessels. This plays an important role in tumor growth.

Cancer cells need a lot of energy to grow fast—to do so, they show abnormal metabolic pathways.

One thing we know about cancer cells: they can resist death. They evade apoptosis, the mechanism that programs cell death once cells become damaged. Normally, apoptosis helps keep an organism healthy through growth and development, maintaining body tissue by removing infected or damaged cells. But cancer cells do not follow this process, no matter how abnormally they grow.

Running an ELISA can be a pain. Identifying pairs for an ELISA is a tedious business, and that’s before developing and validating the ELISA assay itself. Using a kit can simplify the process, but at what cost? Will that kit hinder reproducibility by introducing lot-to-lot variability over the course of my project’s lifetime? Many kits still require numerous reagent addition, incubation, and wash steps that add hands-on time and complexity to your assay.

Flow cytometry enables quantitative analysis of protein expression, signaling states, and physical characteristics (cell size/granularity) at the single-cell level. Modern flow cytometers are capable of collecting data on multiple proteins from thousands of cells per second in a heterogeneous mixture. While flow cytometry is commonly employed to identify cell types using phenotypic markers expressed on the cell surface, it can also be used to measure intracellular signaling events.