Äkta Explorer FPLC core facility

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Nowadays I spend much of my time at work on the purification of proteins which regulate angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis . Therefore, I am taking care of the necessary machinery that the Molecular Cancer Biology Research Program owns: the fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) machine. Prof. Jorma Keski-Oja acquired about 15 years ago one of the first (and in 2010 discontinued) Äkta Explorer machines from Swedish producer Pharmacia (who merged in 1997 with Amersham to become Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, who was in turn bought by GE Healthcare in 2004). In the year 2000 the equipment moved from the Haartman Institute into the Biomedicum Helsinki . While I have maintained web pages for this piece of research infrastructure for the last five years (including online reservation and data backup), they were only available from inside the Helsinki University network.Now, I managed to have web pages about the Äkta Explorer FPLC core facility added to the web site of the Medical Faculty . At the moment, we are adding the WAVE cell culture system to our facility to be able to produce large amounts of cells/cell culture supernatant (up to 25 liters of bacterial, insect or mammalian cell culture) for protein production.

Growth factor regulation of lymphangiogenesis

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

All cells in our body need oxygen and they receive it via the circulating blood. That’s why the vascular system is the first organ system to function in a developing embryo. Before the heart starts pumping, the embryo’s need for oxygen has to be met by diffusion alone. But diffusion is sufficient only until the embryo reaches a size of several millimetres. Tumours face the same problem, when reaching a similar size. Both the developing embryo and the solid tumor can only continue growing if they manage to establish a circulatory system that supplies them with oxygen and nutrients. While cancer depends on the pathological growth of blood vessels, other diseases are caused by insufficient vascular function. E.g. in cardiovascular disease the blood vessels cannot deliver enough oxygen to the heart muscle. Apart from the cardiovascular system there is another vascular system: the lymphatic system. It functions mainly in tissue drainage and immune defense against pathogens. Similar to the cardiovascular function, the lymphatic system plays an important role in several diseases. E.g. in lymphedema patients suffer from swollen limbs because lymphatic vessels are absent or not functioning properly. And the spread of cancer (“metastasis”) seems to be intimately related to the lymphatic system as the cancer cells use the lymphatic vessels as pathways to travel within the body.

Molecular Cancer Biology Program on Michael’s Domain

Äkta Explorer FPLC core facility

Growth factor regulation of lymphangiogenesis