SwitchGear Genomics introduces high-throughput research tools for profiling biological pathway regulation

SwitchGear Genomics, Inc., a leading provider of products for studying regulatory elements in the human genome, today announced the availability of the first cost-effective, high-throughput research tools for screening transcriptional activation and repression in a number of key biological pathways. The new SwitchGear pathway sets utilize experimentally-validated luciferase reporter vectors to accurately quantify human promoter activity from complete sets of genes associated with inflammation, cholesterol biosynthesis, oncology, vascular biology, nuclear hormone receptor signaling, and many other important biological pathways.

“The SwitchGear panels of human promoter targets was selected from our genome-wide reporter collection of promoters using motif analysis and published functional genomic data sets,” said Shelley Force Aldred, co-founder and President of SwitchGear Genomics, Inc. “We then performed pathway-specific inductions to create an activity profile across the set of constructs. We offer complete pathway profiling sets of constructs in high-throughput plate formats that empower researchers to efficiently profile the effects of many compounds and conditions.” In addition, the company provides a smaller subset of “key responder” promoter constructs that showed a strong induction response in the experiments and which may be used as biomarkers in primary screening applications.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health screened over 1400 compounds to test hypoxia pathway stimulation and published the results in an article entitled “Identification of Chemical Compounds that Induce HIF-1alpha Activity.” The screening process, including the use of the SwitchGear Genomics hypoxia set of promoter reporter assays, differentiated between 3 hypoxia mimetics and 2 other compounds that triggered the pathway independent of HIF-1alpha, a result important for effective compound screening.

In addition to the hypoxia (HIF1a) pathway products, SwitchGear offers the following reporter assay profiling sets in both plate format and biomarker subsets: CREB, NF-kB, heat shock (HSF), p53, STAT, serum response factor (SRF), and cholesterol biosynthesis (SREBP). In addition, the company offers nuclear receptor sets for estrogen receptor, androgen receptor, and glucocorticoid receptor pathways.