Topic: single domain antibodies

Depression is a neuropsychiatric condition affecting 5% of the population and involving loss of interest, low mood, and anhedonia. Depression has been ranked as the third cause of the burden of disease worldwide in 2008 by the World Health Organization WHO. Depression molecular etiology is complex and still not fully understood. Common limitations of gold standard small molecule drugs include poor efficacy, off target side effects and difficult druggability of many targets. In this study we report a radically different approach deploying small engineered single domain antibodies (nanobody) tar

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) are the largest family of membrane proteins in the human genome and represent targets of about 30% of the marketed drugs. Among GPCRs, metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are interesting targets as they regulate neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission in the central nervous system, and are involved in various brain diseases. Due to the lack of specific tools, their specific subunit composition in native tissues is still difficult to determine. Finding highly specific tools to target each mGluR subunit is still a challenge that single domain anti

Studying synaptic proteins, which are regulating synaptic transmission and organization, is a challenging task as traditional localization and staining methods face limitations in mapping proteins in living cells. For example, traditional antibodies are too large to freely diffuse into the extracellular protein-enriched synaptic cleft and the use of detergents for improving cell penetration cannot be applied in living cells and damages synaptic membrane integrity. We are particularly interested in understanding the mechanism of calcium-regulated neurotransmitter release and synapse formation b