Publications by authors named "Serge Muyldermans"

Human neutrophil elastase (hNE), a serine protease released by neutrophils during inflammation, plays a major role in the pathophysiology of several conditions especially in inflammatory lung diseases. Its inhibition constitutes, therefore, a promising therapeutic strategy to combat these diseases. In this work, we characterized the in vitro properties of a VHH (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Heavy-chain antibodies (HCAbs) are a unique type of antibodies devoid of light chains, and comprised of two heavy chains-only that recognize their cognate antigen by virtue of a single variable domain also referred to as VHH, single domain antibody (sdAb), or nanobody (Nb). These functional HCAbs, serendipitous discovered about three decades ago, are exclusively found in camelids, comprising dromedaries, camels, llamas, and vicugnas. Nanobodies have become an essential tool in biomedical research and medicine, both in diagnostics and therapeutics due to their beneficial properties: small size, high stability, strong antigen-binding affinity, low immunogenicity, low production cost, and straightforward engineering into more potent affinity reagents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is an opportunistic fungus that becomes pathogenic and problematic under certain biological conditions. may cause painful and uncomfortable symptoms, as well as deaths in immunocompromised patients. Therefore, early detection of is essential.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Bibliometric and scientometric analyses provide a structured approach to large amounts of data, enabling the prediction of research theme trends over time, the detection of shifts in the boundaries of disciplines, and the identification of the most productive countries, institutions and scholars. In the context of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radiotheranostics, no bibliometric or scientometric analysis has been published thus far. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify key contributors to the literature, assess the global scientific production of related research, and possibly predict future development patterns.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers used single-domain nanobodies from camels to target a specific enzyme (β-1,3-glucanosyltransferases) crucial for fungal survival, revealing important structural insights.
  • * The tested nanobody showed strong antifungal effects in laboratory settings and in animal models, particularly against certain strains of C. neoformans, suggesting it could be a promising avenue for developing new antifungal therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The complexities of prostate cancer present challenges for imaging, monitoring, and treatment, leading to the development of theranostics, which combines targeted imaging and therapy.
  • * Prominent advancements in radiotheranostics include FDA-approved PSMA-targeted imaging and therapy agents, representing significant progress in managing prostate cancer, alongside ongoing research into ligand-drug and immune therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The injudicious usage of antibiotics during infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria leads to the emergence of β-lactamases. Among them, the NDM-1 enzyme poses a serious threat to human health. Developing new antibiotics or inhibiting β-lactamases might become essential to reduce and prevent bacterial infections.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fungal pathogens such as have significant impacts on women's health and the economy worldwide. Current detection methods often require access to laboratory facilities that are costly, inconvenient, and slow to access. This often leads to self-diagnosis, self-treatment and eventual antifungal resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The opening of pannexin1 channels is considered as a key event in inflammation. Pannexin1 channel-mediated release of adenosine triphosphate triggers inflammasome signaling and activation of immune cells. By doing so, pannexin1 channels play an important role in several inflammatory diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reduced levels of the Sortilin-related receptor with A-type repeats (SORLA) in different brain regions as well as in the cerebrospinal fluid have been associated with Alzheimer's disease. Methods and reagents to develop reliable detection assays to quantify SORLA and its specific isoforms are therefore much needed. Nanobodies (Nbs) are unique biomolecules derived from the blood of camelids that display advantageous physicochemical and antigen affinity properties, making them attractive tools with great relevance to both diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Enterotoxigenic (ETBF) can rapidly secrete an enterotoxin termed toxin (BFT), which is thought to be the only recognized virulence factor in ETBF. ETBF can cause acute diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. BFT is divided into three subtypes, BFT1, BFT2, and BFT3.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) are exceptionally stable fragments derived from the antigen-binding domains of immunoglobulins. They can withstand extreme pH, high temperature, and proteolysis, making them suitable for controlling gastrointestinal (GI) infections in humans and animals. sdAbs may function in their native soluble form, although different derived protein formats and the use of delivery vehicles can be useful for improved oral delivery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The cancer "omics" reveal many clinically relevant alterations that are transforming the molecular characterization of glioblastomas. However, many of these findings are not yet translated into clinical practice due, in part, to the lack of non-invasive biomarkers and the limitations imposed by the blood-brain barrier. Nanobodies, camelid single-domain antibody fragments, emerge as a promising tool for immunotargeted applications for diagnosing and treating glioblastomas.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer-related deaths among women. Since ovarian cancer patients are often asymptomatic, most patients are diagnosed only at an advanced stage of disease. This results in a 5-year survival rate below 50%, which is in strong contrast to a survival rate as high as 94% if detected and treated at an early stage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Milk proteins are widely used for food supplementation, despite the potential risk of food allergy, especially against β-lactoglobulin (BLG), which makes BLG surveillance critical. Possible interaction of detecting antibodies with BLG-derived peptides will result in unprecise inspection. Thus, in this study, it was proposed to generate nanobodies (Nbs) and validate the immunological detection of intact BLG rather than hydrolytic peptides.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Increasing antibiotic resistance to bacterial infections causes a serious threat to human health. Efficient detection and treatment strategies are the keys to preventing and reducing bacterial infections. Due to the high affinity and antigen specificity, antibodies have become an important tool for diagnosis and treatment of various human diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Serum ferritin (SF) is an iron-rich protein tightly connected with iron homeostasis, and the variations are frequently observed in diseased states, including iron-deficiency anemia, inflammation, liver disease, and tumors, which renders SF level an indicator of potential malignancies in clinical practice. Nanobodies (Nbs) have been widely explored and developed into theranostic reagents. Surprisingly, no reports stated the identification of anti-SF Nbs, nor the potential of such Nbs as a diagnostic tool.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The unique characteristics of camelid heavy-chain only antibody (HCAb) derived nanobodies (Nbs) have facilitated their employment as tools for research and application in extensive fields including food safety inspection, diagnosis and therapy of diseases, etc., to develop immune detecting techniques or alternative candidates of conventional antibodies as diagnostic and therapeutic reagents. The wide application in the fields of food allergen inspection and immunotherapy has not been addressed as not much results published in the literature.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

High-quality affinity probes are critical for sensitive and specific protein detection, in particular for detection of protein biomarkers in the early phases of disease development. Proximity extension assays (PEAs) have been used for high-throughput multiplexed protein detection of up to a few thousand different proteins in one or a few microliters of plasma. Clonal affinity reagents can offer advantages over the commonly used polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) in terms of reproducibility and standardization of such assays.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Scorpion envenoming is a severe health problem in many regions causing significant clinical toxic effects and fatalities. In the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, scorpion stings are responsible for devastating toxic outcomes in human. The only available specific immunotherapeutic treatment is based on IgG fragments of animal origin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Single domain antibodies (VHHs) are potentially disruptive therapeutics, with important biological value for treatment of several diseases, including neurological disorders. However, VHHs have not been widely used in the central nervous system (CNS), largely because of their restricted blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration. Here, we propose a gene transfer strategy based on BBB-crossing adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based vectors to deliver VHH directly into the CNS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Antibodies as ideal therapeutic and diagnostic molecules are among the top-selling drugs providing considerable efficacy in disease treatment, especially in cancer therapy. Limitations of the hybridoma technology as routine antibody generation method in conjunction with numerous developments in molecular biology led to the development of alternative approaches for the streamlined identification of most effective antibodies. In this regard, display selection technologies such as phage display, bacterial display, and yeast display have been widely promoted over the past three decades as ideal alternatives to traditional methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nanobodies (Nbs) can be successfully retrieved following phage, bacterial, yeast, or ribosome display of immune, synthetic, or naïve libraries. However, after panning, multiple individual Nb clones need to be screened and assessed for solubility, antigen specificity, affinity, and potential biological function. Therefore, it is highly desirable to have a convenient expression strategy to obtain sufficient protein for in-depth characterization of the Nbs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The presence of unique heavy chain-only antibodies (HCAbs) in camelids was discovered at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Brussels, Belgium) at a time when many researchers were exploring the cloning and expression of smaller antigen-binding fragments (Fv and Fab) from hybridoma-derived antibodies. The potential importance of this discovery was anticipated, and efforts were immediately undertaken to understand the emergence and ontogeny of these HCAbs as well as to investigate the applications of the single-domain antigen-binding variable domains of HCAbs (nanobodies). Nanobodies were demonstrated to possess multiple biochemical and biophysical advantages over other antigen-binding antibody fragments and alternative scaffolds.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessiondl2mv72s7mmnd8lptvugr0fqt6a3ml6f): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once