Author: Jordan Villanueva

ADCC and Fc Effector Functions: Considerations for COVID-19 Vaccine Development

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

As we continue navigating the challenges presented by COVID-19, several research areas are crucial for helping us slow the infection rate and ending the pandemic. Advanced testing methods, such as antibody testing, help us understand and predict how the virus will spread, which can inform policy decisions. Effective therapeutics will influence clinical outcomes for individual patients, and several drugs are already being tested or administered. However, an effective vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus is perhaps the most important tool we can use to protect individuals and populations from COVID-19.

Over 90 vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are currently in development around the world. While there are many different types of vaccines, the overall goal is to create long-lasting protective immunity by stimulating the production of specific antibodies. As these vaccine candidates are further characterized, monitoring ADCC activity can provide important insights into their potential efficacy.

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Earth Day 2020: Celebrating Nature During A Pandemic

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

Since Wisconsin issued a Safer at Home order on March 25, I have been leaving my home exactly once a week. Every Tuesday morning, I drive to a small town outside of Madison to spend an hour monitoring a nest of bald eagles. I’ve been volunteering for Bald Eagle Nest Watch since the beginning of the year, and three weeks ago I got my first look at two newly hatched eaglets. Over the past few weeks, I’ve found that my time at the eagle nest is a wonderful relief from the stress of the pandemic and the confinement to my home.

I’m not the only person escaping to natural spaces for relief during the widespread lockdowns in response to COVID-19. Parks have been filled with people taking daily walks and enjoying fresh air when there are few places indoors they can safely go. Besides encouraging many people to visit local parks and forests, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many complexities of humanity’s relationship with the environment. The severe drop in human activities has resulted in decreased air pollution, as well as fascinating changes in wildlife behavior. However, the pandemic is also an important reminder that the environmental impact of human activity has drastic consequences for global risk of infectious disease. This Earth Day, it’s the perfect time to pause and examine how the COVID-19 pandemic and the natural world are influencing each other for better and for worse.

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Flexible Automated Purification Solutions For Dealing With Urgent Needs

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

Implementing a new high-throughput (HT) nucleic acid purification workflow or scaling up an existing workflow presents many unique challenges. To be successful, the chemistry and liquid handler must be perfectly integrated to fit your lab’s specific needs. This involves configuring the instrument deck, optimizing the assay chemistry, and programming the instrument.

When you’re facing a sudden spike in sample throughput demand combined with unprecedented urgency, those challenges can often become overwhelming. Even in times of crisis, Promega scientists are prepared to support labs facing challenges with HT workflows, regardless of your instrumentation platform.

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Conferences in the time of COVID-19

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

Travel and event restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many scientific conferences to be canceled, delayed or adapted into virtual events. These conferences include the Society of Toxicology (SOT), American Association of Cancer Researchers (AACR), Experimental Biology (EB) and the BioPharmaceutical Emerging Best Practices Association (BEBPA) Bioassay Conference, among many others. For the most up-to-date information, we recommend checking with the hosts of each conference.

These cancellations have disrupted many scientists’ plans to present research, engage with potential collaborators and interact with vendors. At Promega, we’re sensitive to the lost opportunities and are currently exploring potential ways to create these experiences despite so many conferences being canceled.

“We want people to be able to talk directly with us and have the same warm feeling as a close conversation at a conference, but without being face to face,” says Allison Suchon, Promega Tradeshow Manager. “We’re looking at different options to have that same conference feeling but without the show going on around us.”

To make the most of our time while we build solutions, we asked Promega scientists for tips on staying connected and informed when you can’t go to conferences. Here are some ideas we gathered.

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A Quick Guide To Finding That Next Step After A Post-Doc

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

On February 13, 2020, a group of post-docs from the University of Wisconsin – Madison had the opportunity to spend a day at the Promega headquarters in Fitchburg, WI. Throughout the day, the group heard from a list of speakers including Tom Livelli, VP of Life Sciences, and representatives from Technical Services, Sales, R&D and Marketing. The day concluded with a tour of the Feynman Manufacturing Center, where attendees saw production and packing lines, as well as training and QC labs.

Promega employees and UW Post-Docs having lunch

“It’s always encouraging as a scientist to hear about how each person is different and how they’ve had different twists and turns,” says Alexa Heaton, a post-doc studying immunotherapy interactions in mice. “It’s great to hear from such a range of people and the different job types I could consider.”

To recap the day, we’ve captured a few of the biggest takeaways below.

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Tidying Up With Promega R&D: Spectrometer From Space?

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

Later this year, Promega will open a new R&D building with more than twice the current amount of lab space available on the Madison campus. While preparing to move to the new building, R&D scientists are cleaning out decades of scientific history housed in some of the older labs. Meagan Eggers, Promega Strategic Information Partner, is collaborating with the research groups to document and preserve noteworthy artifacts unearthed in the Research & Development Center. Over the next few months, we’ll showcase some of the most interesting things we find.

Spectrometer – 1960s-2000

Promega research scientists began investigating bioluminescent proteins in the early 1990s. One of the most important tools in this research was the spectrometer pictured above, which was used to measure the emission spectra of many different organisms. Before it arrived at Promega, however, this spectrometer began in the space program.

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New Year, New Buildings, Same Commitment to Sustainability

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

In times of rapid growth, we look to the future with excitement while also assuring that our expansion is sustainable. The Promega Global Facilities Planning Team emphasizes environmental stewardship and long-term planning. Each building is designed to meet ambitious sustainability goals, and innovations incorporated into each project inform the next. In 2019, we finished construction on two new buildings in Europe and made progress on two important facilities at our headquarters in Wisconsin.

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“The Human Placenta,” or “Why I Love Science Writing”

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

Have you read last week’s breaking story about the microbiome of the human placenta? Wait, stop, don’t run away to Google it! I’ll tell you all about it – this is a science blog, remember?

I’m asking because as I started reading about the topic in preparation for writing this blog post, I noticed two things. First, as a science writer who tries to stay well-connected with what’s going on in the world of biology research, it would have been nearly impossible for me to avoid this story. I get eight or nine daily digest emails from scientific publications every day, and I think over the course of last week, every single one came with a headline related to the placenta study. (Of course, I read them all. And the Nature study they were based on.)

Second, I noticed that each story I read had a slightly different angle on covering the research. As scientists, we like to believe that science is, well, just science. It’s factual. We pore over the data and reach a conclusion. If we aren’t sure of something, we search the journals. The story, if there is one, is about methods and controls, protocols and reagent quality. However, when information about that research is communicated broadly, outside of the journals, we can get a different impression based on how the author frames their article.

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iGEM Stockholm: Blending Art and Synthetic Biology

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

On May 13, 2019, twenty-five meters below the streets of Stockholm in a retired nuclear reactor, Nerea Capon and her iGEM team unveiled an artistic fusion of creativity and synthetic biology. The Synthetic Biology Art Exhibition featured works by other iGEM teams and local artists, all presenting their unique reflections on the concepts of synthetic biology. The collection included synthetic skin grown by bacteria, performance art, and even a musical snail that spent the week crawling around a table full of plants.

“They were mind-blowing,” Nerea says a few weeks after the exhibition. “We let them have total freedom to interpret synthetic biology as they would love to, and it was really surprising.” Continue reading “iGEM Stockholm: Blending Art and Synthetic Biology”