Journal: NAR Cancer

Article Title: Uncovering novel germline variants associated with testicular germ cell tumors by exome sequencing

doi: 10.1093/narcan/zcag007

Figure Lengend Snippet: Volcano plots of single-variant association results. Volcano plots display the distribution of germline variant associations comparing the TGCT discovery cohort to two independent control groups: ( A ) MXLA sample and ( B ) MXMC sample. The x -axis shows the log₂ OR, while the y-axis represents the –log₁₀ P -values from logistic regression models. Variants were prioritized based on predicted pathogenicity (CADD > 20, REVEL > 0.7, or classified as pathogenic/probably pathogenic in ClinVar). The horizontal red dashed line indicates the nominal significance threshold ( P = 0.05). Variants in genes previously highlighted in the gene-based aggregation analysis are shown in black. Arrows mark five exonic variants that showed the strongest and most consistent association signals across both comparisons: SLCO4A1 (rs147153778), ARFGAP1 (rs2273499), MC4R (rs79783591), ADGRB3 (rs137977887), and SDHA (rs138277996).

Article Snippet: Variant rs79783591 ( MC4R) was genotyped using the C_103 977 380_10 TaqMan® SNP Genotyping Assay (Applied Biosystems, UK) per manufacturer’s instructions.

Techniques: Variant Assay, Control

Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: Rapid Intracellular Delivery of Human Heat Shock Protein 72 Inhibits Neurodegeneration and Oxidative Damage After a Traumatic Brain Injury

doi: 10.64898/2026.05.03.722564

Figure Lengend Snippet: A) Schematic of the CCI method. 100µg of cortical tissue extract from each of the rats were plated in triplicate in the wells of an ELISA plate and probed, as described in Methods, at a 1:2000 dilution with a rabbit monoclonal to the pTau S396 phosphorylation site followed by a goat anti-rabbit conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (GAR-HRP). TMB color development was stopped at 5min for this analysis. B) A scatter plot showing all of the triplicate results from both the ipsilateral (darker color) and contralateral (lighter color) hemispheres of each rat is a daunting task to read. The mean for the three contralateral absorbance values from Rat #35 were 327.15% greater than the mean for the other contralateral results; hence this data set was dropped from our analysis (circled in blue). C) To help visualize the data easier, the same results from each group of rats are presented as box plots with the ipsilateral results on the left and the contralateral on the right. Note that the graphs in (B) and (C) reveal global differences both between treatment groups and within groups (i.e. when comparing ipsi vs. contra). D) It is equally important to analyze biomarker differences between the ipsi- and contralateral hemispheres in each rat individually. This is accomplished by plotting the absorbance ratios against a black line denoting an equal distribution of signal in both hemispheres (ipsi / contra = 1). Analysis of the intra-hemispheric differences for each individual rat reveals a lower pTau S396 neurodegeneration signal level in the ipsilateral for rats treated with Fv-HSP72.

Article Snippet: Expanding on work by others showing HSP72 inhibiting brain lesions in mouse cortical impact models, we screened three Fv-HSP72 structural variants ( ) engineered by Rubicon Biotechnology in a rat CCI model simulating a moderate to severe impact.

Techniques: Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay, Phospho-proteomics, Biomarker Discovery

Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: Rapid Intracellular Delivery of Human Heat Shock Protein 72 Inhibits Neurodegeneration and Oxidative Damage After a Traumatic Brain Injury

doi: 10.64898/2026.05.03.722564

Figure Lengend Snippet: Schematics of the 3 Fv-HSP72 variants tested. The ESG and YASYL peptides allow for detection of the 3E10 scFv subunit consisting of a variable light chain (V L ), linker, variable heavy chain (V H ), and a portion of a human constant heavy chain (CH1). These peptides also allow us to differentiate the RBB010 from RBB012 variants by mass spec because of a point mutation in the V L sequence. C-terminal to the 3E10 subunit are the clevable linkers (Swivel, CTB) followed by a modified human HSP72 common to all 3 variants. The ITP and FGD peptides track this modified HSP72 and differentiate it from endogenous HSP72 in tissue extracts. The ITP peptide detects Fv-HSP72 regardless of the oxidative state of the tissues it is in. FGD has a methionine residue that can be oxidized and allows us to evaluate the relative oxidation level of our drug by setting the mass spectrometer to detect FGD peptide in three states of oxidation (methionine unoxidized, methionine sulfoxide and methionine sulfone).

Article Snippet: Expanding on work by others showing HSP72 inhibiting brain lesions in mouse cortical impact models, we screened three Fv-HSP72 structural variants ( ) engineered by Rubicon Biotechnology in a rat CCI model simulating a moderate to severe impact.

Techniques: Mass Spectrometry, Mutagenesis, Sequencing, Modification, Residue