Posts Tagged ‘AML’

JAK2+ | Conversant

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

The JAK2 (Janus Kinase 2) is becoming very relevant in ongoing cancer studies, mainly in the area of myeloproliferative disorders (MPD’s). These disorders can be classified as diseases where the bone marrow produces excess cells. Coincidentally, many MPD’s are related and often evolve into cancers such as acute myeloid leukemia. Polycythemia vera (PV), one of the more common MPD’s, is a brand of MPD in which the bone marrow produces too many red blood cells.

Amazingly, recent research has shown a mutation in the JAK2, ties all of the above information together. Multiple research facilities recently observed a mutation recognized now as JAK2 V617F, more commonly called the JAK2+ mutation. Many researchers are in agreement that a major breakthrough in MPD therapeutics can be discovered by further understanding this JAK2+ mutation.

Currently, JAK2+ inhibitors are being tested in vitro and through clinical trials. By providing clients with specimens known to be JAK2+ we feel we are fueling advances in MPD’s and PV studies. If you have any questions or comments about our JAK2+ samples please feel to leave a comment or fill out the form to the left

San Francisco, a biotechnology HUB!| Conversant

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Conversant has been busy… over the past 3 weeks I have been traveling all over the United States talking with companies and researchers about our Human Primary Cells, our Circulating Tumor Cells, and our other products and services. As you might imagine, our clients lead us in some very interesting directions with our products… and they also lead us all over the country and even the world. But there is just something really unique about the San Francisco biotech community.

From downtown San Francisco to South San Francisco, to Redwood City, to Palo Alto, to Sunnyvale, our cancer, hematology, and immunology research Clients are up to some pretty amazing research.

They study B-Cells, they study CD34+ cells, they study Circulating Tumor cells, they extract cancer DNA and cancer RNA, and they generally wow me everytime I have a chance to visit. All this traveling has been great to see and gives me a ton of confidence in our economy. Thank all of you for including Conversant in your research studies; we appreciate your business.

Human CD19+ B Cells in CLL | Tips and Tricks | Conversant

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Today we hosted Mike Warnement, our regional technical sales representative from STEMCELL Technologies. Mike was a great resource to us as we further refine our primary cell isolation methods from periperal blood mononuclear cells (“PMBC”) and bone marrow mononuclear cells (“BMMC”) for Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia (“CLL”) specimens.

Because we can collect fresh whole blood and fresh bone marrow samples from Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia patients and deliver them overnight, we get a lot of requests for CLL. We’re also getting more and more requests for isolation of PBMC, BMMC, but also CD19+ B Cells from CLL patients. We not only can deliver CD19+ B Cells with over 96% purity, but we also extract DNA, RNA, and fix B Cells upon request.

We were also glad to have Prof. Catherine Sanders, a research investigator from Dr. Jian Han’s Lab, join us in our lab as we worked through our quality assurance protocols for enumeration, purity, and CD19+ B Cell specificity. Their work has often included our primary cells in the areas of hematology, cancer, and lupus.

Using a variety of STEMCELL’s technologies, we’re fast on our way to isolating wide varieties of primary cells from CLL, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, and other diseased cells and normal cells.

Society of Toxicology ’09 | Leukemia | Conversant

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Conversant attended the 2009 SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo™ in Baltimore, Maryland, March 15–19, 2009. We spent time chatting with clients and visiting with prospective clients. We’ve continued to have a lot of interest from researchers in our diseased and normal primary cells (AML, CML, CLL, PV, Normals). Primary cells more closely mimic the physiological state of cells in vivo and generate more relevant data, so researchers are moving away from cell lines to using primary cells.