Autophagy & Apoptosis

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Essential Pathways

in Health & Disease

Autophagy and Apoptosis are two of the most essential pathways in development and homeostatsis. The deregulation of any of these two cellular pathways can have a major impact on tissue integrity and function and has been associated with the development of several cancer types.

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Autophagy

essential mechanism for homeostasis

Autophagy (or autophagocytosis) is a strictly regulated, natural process for the degradation and recycling of cellular components. During this process unnecessary or dysfuntional components are removed from the cells. Autophagy was first described as primordial degradation pathway to protect cells from starvation by maintaining the cellular energy level. Autophagy has many functions in a variety of cellular processes. Amongst others, it plays an important role during infection, targeting pathogens for degradation and is strongly involved in the repair mechanism of the cell by degrading defective organelles, membranes and proteins.

Several human diseases have also been described to be associated with defects of the autophagy pathway, especially a variety of cancers or neurodegenerative diseases. For some diseases autophagy seems to promote the survival of cells whereas in others it promotes cell death and morbidity.

Process of autophagy, which produces the structures autophagosomes (AP) and autolysosomes (AL)

Apoptosis

the programmed cell death

Apoptosis is a highly regulated process in multicellular organisms. There are two initiation pathways induce either by an internal trigger, intrinsic pathway, like cell stress or an external trigger, extrinsic pathways, e.g. specific signaling from surrounding cells. The underlying mechanism induced by both pathways is the activation of initiator caspases and the downstream activation of executioner caspases which are specific enzymes/proteases degrading proteins indiscriminately.

The program follows very characteristic changes including blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, chromosomal DNA fragmentation and RNA decay. The formation of apoptotic bodies prevent the release of cellular content onto surrounding cells and are finally removed by phagocytic cells.

Apoptosis represents a very important process druing an organism's life cycle e.g. during development and homeostatsis. Defects in the apoptotic pathway have been linked to a wide range of diseases. The regulation of the apoptotic pathways by proteins promting or inhibiting apoptosis thus is a critical equilibrium to prevent atrophy caused by extensive apoptosis or uncontrolled cell proliferation resulting in diseases such as cancer.

The protein p53 has sigificant impact on that critical equilibrium. This tumor-suppressor protein usually accumulates when DNA is damaged due to a chain of biochemical factors. While repairing p53 stops the cell from replicating by stopping the cell cycle at G1 or interphase. This Process gives the cells time to repair damage, however it will induce apoptosis if damage is extensive and repair efforts fail.

Cell undergoing apoptosis

p62 - essential marker for autophagy

PROGEN´s p62 antibodies, trusted & dependable tools in autophagy research

Browse our Autophagy & Apoptosis Antibodies

suitable for
ICC, IF, IP, WB

Browse our p62 Antibodies

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2016 was awarded for outstanding discoveries in the field of autophagy, which is a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components. This groundbreaking research lead to the understanding of the central importance of autophagy in many physiological processes, such as in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection.
Major findings require not only outstanding minds but also excellent and reliable tools to create meaningful data. In a concerted effort to standardize research in this field, the autophagy community has established a set of guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy [1].

PROGEN’s p62 antibodies enable the immunodetection of p62/SQSTM1 and are mentioned in these guidelines as useful reagents for monitoring autophagy by western blot ([1]: p61, Fig. 15). The p62 protein plays an important role in ubiquitin-associated degradation and autophagy where it acts as a selective autophagy receptor, assembled in filamentous polymers and shuttling ubiquitinylated proteins to the autophagosomes [2].

Since 2000 when they were first sold by PROGEN, the p62 antibodies have been cited in numerous relevant papers on a wide range of scientific issues and are now recognized by researchers worldwide as dependable reagents for autophagy research.
PROGEN offers two anti-p62 guinea pig polyclonal sera that detect either N- or C-terminus of the p62 protein and that are both suitable for immunohistochemistry and western blots.

[1] Klionsky DJ et al., Autophagy, 2016 (3rd edition)
[2] Ciuffa et al., Cell Rep., 2015, 11(5):748-58

Western Blot Controls

PROGEN offers a validated positive control for western blot analysis for use with our widely cited C-terminal p62/SQSTM1 antibody. Take control of your western blot data and order a suitable western blot control along with your antibody of choice.

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p53 - tumor supressor

PROGEN´s trusted p53 antibodies for cell cycle research and tumor analysis

Browse our p53 Apoptosis Antibodies

suitable for
ICC, IF, IP, WB

Browse p53 Antibodies

As mentioned above p53 proteins can stop cells from replicating and induce apoptose in highly damaged cells e.g. tumor cells which makes them effective tools against cancer. Unfortunately p53 is typically mutated in tumor cells wich leads to an abnormal response and no apoptosis induction. Usually this Mutations occur in the central DNA-binding Domain, causing a dominant negative effect for the protein and making it impossible to bind DNA or react as a transcription factor. As a result accumulating wild type p53 are inactivated and without regulation of cell cycle or apoptosis, potentially rogue cells can divide erratically.

Therefore PROGEN provides excellent markers for wild-type and mutant human p53. Our Antibodies are avaiable in different antigen and application formats, staining approx. 60% of investigated carcinoma including several positive targets like:

tumor of lung, breast, colon, stomach, esophagus, pancreas, urinary bladder and
testis
head and neck
T-cell Leukemia
non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma
melanoma
sarcoma

Because of the important role of p53 in tumor suppression, and its mutations benefitting tumorigenesis, it is an important target in cancer therapy. Gene therapies are studying the effect of a transfer of a correct gene copy into the organism, others approach the issue with immune therapies against the defect p53 gene. Some researches could show that with the help of altered AAV, cells with mutated p53 could be eliminated. For more information towards AAV, feel free to check out our AAV Category.

PROGEN's reliable p53 antibodies

Our Antibodies are highly puplished and used in many publications.
Check out our references below to read furthermore or convince yourself by buying a sample size set!