I’d like to thank our amazing customers and collaborators who have supported Qkine since we span out of Cambridge University nearly 5 years ago to add a dose of innovation and improve reliability in the growth factor supply chain…and yes we are planning a huge celebration in November, watch this space! The fantastic team here at Qkine have continued to build our capacity and double our product portfolio over the last year and we are particularly proud of the unique products we have made available to stem cell scientists globally. Some highlights are below and we are always keen to hear about your needs and celebrate your successes. Please reach out to the team any time.
Best regards,
Catherine (CEO and Founder)
new products
class of 2021
So far this year, ten proteins have graduated into the Qkine range – all manufactured by our Qkine team. The favorites of our R&D team are mouse and human noggin, fascinating proteins used in the culture of intestinal, pancreatic, lung and tumor-derived organoids, maintenance of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells, and for stem cell differentiation into neural and microglial lineages.
coming next
FGF7, NRG1 and IGF1 LR3!
cool science
capture of mouse and human stem cells with features of formative pluripotency
We are always proud to see our growth factors featured in high quality research, such as this recent publication from the lab of Austin Smith.
Masaki Kinoshita, first author, MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, says:
“Formative” pluripotency exists transiently in early development and naive mouse ES cell differentiation, which cells directly respond to differentiation signals. This paper showed that formative pluripotency is now captured in culture and expands its knowledge including chimaera competency of early embryonic cells.
Summary:
In the study of embryonic stem cells, stem cells representative of naïve and primed pluripotency have been well established in the forms of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and epiblast-derived stem cells (EpiSCs). In this study Kinoshita et al. fill the gap between early and late pluripotency in describing an intermediate state; formative stem (FS) cells. FS cells differ from both ESCs and EpiSCs, a difference beautifully exemplified by their relative contribution to chimeras. Compared with ESCs, which readily contribute to chimeras, FS chimera contribution is less frequent, and their contribution is less evenly distributed. EpiSCs on the other hand do not generally contribute to chimeras at all. FS cells were established by culturing E5.5 epiblasts, or ES cells, in N2B27 media supplemented with a low dose of Qkine Activin A alongside a Wnt inhibitor and pan-retinoic acid receptor inverse agonist. We are proud our growth factors could be part of such an exciting finding!
innovation
pioneering proteins
We believe in making the most of academic innovation – interesting engineered forms of growth factors shouldn’t be retired to the back of the freezer, but made available to the wider community so the hard work of protein chemists can be utilized by many. To support this, we have launched our Pioneering Protein range; modified proteins developed by academic laboratories and manufactured to our high purity and bioactivity standards.
This range begins with two proteins, both developed in the University of Cambridge, follistatin-resistant activin A, FRACTA (Qk035), developed in the lab of Marko Hyvönen’s and High affinity LGR5 receptor-binding R-spondin 1 LR5 (Qk031) developed in the lab of Marc de la Roche.
If you would like to try one of these please get in touch!
support spot
making life easy and keeping proteins happy
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to keep our lovely proteins in top condition. From June, we are supplying 10 mM HCl (reconstitution solution a) with lyophilised proteins where this is the recommended reconstitution buffer. No need to make buffers and optimal protein performance – win win!
how else can we help?
If you have any suggestions of how we can make lab life easy, please let us know or drop us an email to support@qkine.com.
new protein suggestions
Can’t find your favorite protein? Or looking for a different species reactivity? Let us know and we will get working on it! Make your suggestion here of what you want to see in our pipeline.
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