The retina is immune privileged which means that it needs a specialized defense system to protect the eye from insults. This system consists of innate immune cells combined with the complement system.
During normal aging this defense system undergoes low-grade activation. However, for some disorders, e.g., age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR), the normal low-grade inflammation develops into chronic inflammation.
The complement system is believed to play an important role in this change and there are several complement-based clinical trials for retinal diseases.
In addition to complement system involvement, there are many other molecules involved in the inflammation process of the eye that may be interesting to study in relation to retinal diseases.
Register to receive your free poster showing the complement system pathways.
Svar Life Science offers a broad range of solutions for the study of the complement system. We have tools for functional assessment that can be used to study the three major pathways of the complement system independently from each other. In addition, we have ELISA-based and cell-based solutions for the analysis of complement biomarkers.
Svar’s complement activity biomarker assays offer excellent specificity, which means that you get easy-to-interpret data without having to worry about false positives. In addition, our assays offer low batch-to-batch variation compared to hemolytic methods – where erythrocytes can differ between lots – which means more consistent and robust results.
Taken together, you can get reliable and objective results in just 3 hours – from days to hours compared to hemolytic assays.
For the analysis of other molecules involved in inflammation, we offer cell-based iLite® assays. iLite cell-based assays are based on reporter gene technology. Target-specific receptors on the cell surface generate the expression of luciferase when bound. Many iLite cells contain a secondary reporter gene that can be used for normalization purposes.
A number of off-the-shelf assay-ready cell lines are available. In addition, we can create custom cell lines for targets that are not currently in our portfolio.
Our Bioanalytical Services have long experience in creating assays for a wide range of projects and can help you create the optimal assay for your target.
These assays offer a convenient and powerful way of measuring and quantifying drug potency, detecting neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) and assessing immunogenicity.