Blog
Educational material, comparison studies and publications on SPR and other related techniques for researchers.
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Case Study: The Importance of Binding Kinetics in Drug Discovery
Drug discovery is a critical and complex area of research. Rigorous testing, crucial safety considerations, and exhaustive data are all required for a drug candidate to progress into clinical trials. However, it is through this process that life-saving drugs such as Gleevec (a treatment for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia with an incredible success rate) and Serelaxin […]
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New Publication – OpenSPR™ Binding Data Reveals Novel Mechanisms of Alzheimer’s Disease
Over 50 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) or another form of dementia, according to the World Alzheimer Report 2018 (Patterson, 2018). This totals an estimated $1 Trillion USD in cost of care. It is no surprise that AD is a significant area of research today as scientists hope to find […]
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Technical Guide: Epitope Mapping Techniques
Whether you’re developing a novel vaccine or designing antibody therapeutics, chances are you have used several epitope mapping techniques to learn more about how your antibodies are behaving. However, this crucial step in many research applications often comes with complications when working with challenging proteins, such as those with non-linear binding regions. An ELISA has […]
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Technical Guide: Conducting In Vitro Assays with Transmembrane Proteins
Transmembrane proteins account for approximately 50% of the total mass in a lipid bilayer and serve as front line communicators and transporters. Transmembrane proteins (TMPs) are integral membrane proteins permanently attached to a biological membrane. TMPs typically contain three major regions – an extracellular domain, membrane domain and an intracellular domain. Although TMPs are prevalent […]
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Publication – OpenSPR Binding Data Reveals a Novel Approach to Treat Chronic Itch
Chronic itch associated diseases such as eczema and psoriasis will affect over 20% of human beings during their lifetime (Adikaram et al., 2019). And yet, there are surprisingly few anti-chronic itch drugs available. Those that do exist usually come with unwanted side effects such as somnolence, weight gain and gastrointestinal symptoms (Yosipovitch, Rosen, and Hashimoto, […]
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Cut Your Lab Instrument Downtime to 0 Using OpenSPR™
Having the right tools is essential for any profession. A chef cannot cook without knives, and a carpenter cannot build without a hammer. The same is also true for scientific researchers. Having the correct lab instrumentation to perform your experiments is key to publishing, and replacing or fixing these tools is not easy. Instruments tend […]
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How to Write a Successful Grant Proposal
You’re passionate about your research. Your work is crucial for scientific discovery and deserves to be carried out. We know that, and we love what you’re doing. So why can it be so challenging for academic researchers to obtain research funding? At Nicoya, we speak with researchers all over the world. We hear the same […]
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5 Tips on Getting Published in a High-Impact Journal
How do you define success as an academic researcher? We’ve spoken with thousands of academic researchers, and their end goal is almost always the same – getting published. Publishing papers in academic journals is just as crucial for a graduate student to show their worth as it is for an assistant professor who is hoping […]
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App Note: Binding Kinetics of Protein-Protein Interactions using OpenSPR™
Are protein binding kinetics important for your research? Benchtop SPR is a user-friendly tool that allows researchers to characterize biomolecular interactions in real-time measurements. Forget CO-IPs that takes days to run and only give end-point measurements, or techniques that use too much precious sample like ITC. In this blog post, we discuss how OpenSPR™ can […]
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4 Types of Binding Assays You Can Do With SPR
Whether you’re designing novel antibodies for your groundbreaking vaccine work or you’re breaking down a key pathway in cancer metastasis, you know the importance of understanding how the components of your system are interacting. At this point you have achieved great results from the preliminary stages of your interaction research workflow – you’ve identified a […]
