Becton Dickinson and Company Limited

New York Medical College

Vector Tobacco Inc.

Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz

Frank Traganos

Gloria Juan

Stefan Gruenwald

Anthony P Albino

Ellen Jorgensen

Wendy Jin

Aspects of the invention concern methods for detecting, identifying and evaluating tobacco and tobacco products to determine the potential that these compositions have to contribute to a tobacco-related disease. It is based, at least in part; on the discovery that exposure of pulmonary cells to smoke or smoke condensate obtained from tobacco or tobacco products induces double stranded breaks in cellular DNA, which were efficiently detected using assays that measure the presence, absence, or amount of phosphorylation of the histone, H2AX.

Approaches to identify less harmful tobacco and tobacco products

Methods, reagents, and kits are provided that permit flow cytometric determination of the phosphorylation status of retinoblastoma susceptibility gene protein (pRB) in individual cells. Methods are described that permit the hypophosphorylated, active, form of pRB to be measured either as an absolute quantity or as a proportion of total cellular pRB. Further described are methods that permit pRB phosphorylation status to be correlated with cell cycle phase and with protein components of the cell cycle. Screening of chemical compounds for antiproliferative and antineoplastic activity using the flow cytometric assays is demonstrated. Reagent kits that facilitate the subject methods are also provided.

Detection of protein conformations in single cells

Flow cytometric methods for the concurrent detection of discrete functional conformations of PRB in single cells

Methods for immunocytochemical detection and isolation of RNA.

Physical separation of nucleic acids by antibodies to halogenated nucleotides

Growing community of inventors

Chappaque, NY, United States of America

Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz