INDIGO Blog

View our most recent posts to learn more about various types of receptors, cell-based assays, and their use in drug discovery and environmental testing applications. 

 

Mechanistic Safety Screening for Nutraceutical Ingredient Development

The nutraceutical and dietary supplement market continues to expand as consumers seek products supporting areas such as metabolic health, healthy aging, immune function, energy, and cognitive performance. At the same time, ingredient innovation is moving beyond traditional vitamins and minerals toward botanical extracts, purified natural products, fermentation-derived ingredients, and other biologically active compounds.That innovation creates…

What Is IL-6R? Its Role in Inflammation, Disease, and Drug Discovery

The Interleukin-6 Receptor (IL-6R) is a cytokine receptor that plays a role in inflammation, immune regulation, and the body’s response to infection and tissue injury. IL-6R is part of the receptor system that mediates the biological effects of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a pleiotropic cytokine involved in both normal physiological processes and numerous inflammatory disease states.The IL-6…

Reporter Assays for Biologics: Moving from Binding to Functional Characterization

Biologics have transformed drug discovery by enabling researchers to target disease biology with a level of specificity that is often difficult to achieve with traditional small molecules. Monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins, peptides, and other biologic modalities can selectively engage receptors, ligands, and cell-signaling mechanisms involved in disease. However, their complexity can also make functional characterization…

Transient Transfection vs. Stable Transduction for Luciferase Reporter Assays

Cell-based luciferase reporter assays are used to measure functional receptor activity, gene expression responses, and transcriptional regulation in a cellular assay format. Reporter cells are engineered with a luciferase reporter that produces a measurable signal in response to activation or inhibition of a target receptor signaling pathway. Depending on the assay design, the target receptor…

Reporter Gene Assay Protocol: Key Steps, Controls, and Best Practices

A well-designed reporter gene assay protocol helps researchers measure functional receptor or transcription factor activity with consistency and confidence. Unlike binding assays, which assess whether a compound interacts with a target, reporter gene assays measure a functional cellular response associated with target or signaling-pathway activity. This makes them valuable for evaluating agonism, antagonism, potency, efficacy,…