FYI. Dharmacon launches new reagents.
Cheers,
Thomas
drugresearcher.com
Dharmacon launches DharmaFECT on siRNA market
15/11/2004 - Dharmacon, supplier of RNA and sequence interfering (siRNA) research products, has launched a range of siRNA transfection reagents designed specifically to enhance transfection efficiency, a crucial procedure in initial drug target identification to late-stage therapeutic development.
Primarily aimed at researchers in drug discovery, functional genomics, and basic cell biology laboratories in pharma, biotech or university research labs, Dharmacon’s reagents are ideally suited for drug target validation and are guaranteed to deliver higher levels of siRNA delivery, measured by GAPDH knockdown, by at least 77 per cent when used under appropriate conditions.
With the introduction of Dharacon’s reagents, scientists can now obtain all the reagents needed to conduct transfection experiments, This includes the transfixion reagents (along with the conditions suited to a particular cell line), sinus, controls, and RNA quantitation assays.
Dharmacon has tested its siRNA transfection reagents in more than 20 cell lines, ranging from standard lines (e.g. HeLa) to those that have been historically difficult to transfect (e.g. HepG2, THP-1). Optimised for a 96 well plate format, DharmaFECT’s panel of lipids are adept when used to deliver siRNA into a variety of human and mouse cell lines including adherent cells and cells adapted for growth in suspension.
The set consists of DharmaFECT 1, 2, 3 and 4 each representing siRNA transfection reagent targeting GAPDH into various cell lines. DharmaFect is designed to complement Dharmacon’s siRNA products designed with Dharmacon’s SMARTselection technology.
Successful siRNA experiments require a transfection agent optimized for siRNA delivery, the efficiency with which different transfection agents deliver siRNA can vary. Equally important for efficient transfection and reliable results is a transfection protocol that is optimized for the cell type.
The choice of transfection agent is critical for gene silencing experiments using siRNA. Without efficient transfection, siRNA will fail to elicit a cellular response. Most commercially available transfection agents are developed for plasmid transfections and many are limited to a few cell types.
Reagents for the siRNA transfection market have hotted up considerably since Ambion released its product that has become one of the leading transfection reagents. The Silencer siRNA Transfection Kit contains transfection agents and controls developed specifically for RNA interference (RNAi), or gene silencing.
The kit includes both siPORT Lipid and siPORT Amine transfection agents. They each have different properties to support siRNA transfection of a broad range of cell types. siPORT Lipid is a proprietary mixture of lipids that spontaneously complex with siRNA and facilitate its transfer into cells; siPORT Amine is a proprietary blend of polyamines that delivers siRNA with minimal cytotoxicity. The kit also includes siRNA positive and negative controls for use in protocol development.
siRNA has become the method of choice for a wide range of biomedical applications, in particular emerging as the best functional genomics screening method to identify and validate new drug targets. In so doing, RNAi is not only replacing antisense and ribozyme-based paradigms for cell-based research, but now also offers the promise of a more time and cost-efficient alternative to transgenic mouse knock-out strategies.
In particular, the properties, which make siRNA sequences so useful in basic research, their potency, stability and specificity, make them attractive as potential therapeutics. |
