Advanced Western Blotting Solutions for Cancer Research
Accelerate your Cancer Research with ProteinSimple’s advanced Western Blotting Systems that allow you to uncover new views into the role of proteins in cancer and accelerate your ability to develop and analyze protein-based therapeutics.
Simple Western systems provide fully automated, hands-free western blotting analysis on 24 samples per run, giving you reproducibility that's spot on, and using less sample in the process (as low as 3µL sample). Single-Cell Western systems provide the ability to study heterogeneity in your cancer samples and to work with low abundance samples (10,000 cells). If you’re still doing traditional westerns, our imaging platforms also provide robust, reliable and multiplexed images of your gels and blots. Together, these systems allow for quantitative results that enable identification of specific proteins in complex mixtures and at single cell levels.

Detect biomarkers in precious, low abundance samples including laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) samples
Simple Western requires only a few microliters of LCM sample to generate multiple data points. Simple Western also has the sensitivity to analyze low abundance proteins that are difficult to detect by traditional Western blot. And it’s all wrapped up in a simple workflow that minimizes your hands-on time. In this application note, we show two examples of how Simple Western was ideally suited for the analysis of LCM samples. Request pricing or more information on Simple Westerns.
Milo can analyze samples which contain as low as 10,000 single-cells so you no longer have to collect millions of cells to analyze protein expression. The number of cells captured scales with the number of cells loaded so even lower abundance samples are possible. Milo can also characterize highly enriched FACS-sorted cell populations which don't contain enough cells to analyze with other techniques. Request pricing or more information on Single-Cell Westerns.
Study the Tumor Microenvironment
Tumor heterogeneity poses a significant challenge to the development of effective cancer therapies. Further, the tumor microenvironment creates a complex ecosystem of diverse tumor and immune cell types. Methodologies like flow cytometry have limitations such as off-target binding of variants/ isoforms and difficulties in finding validated antibodies. In this application note, Simple Western and Single-Cell Western systems partner to get you critical answers on the immune cell populations found in the tumor microenvironment offering both population level views and single-cell level perspectives on cell subtypes. Request pricing or more information on Simple Westerns and Single-Cell Westerns.
Characterize Cell Signaling with Quantitative Western Blotting
Quantitative measurements of protein expression are extremely difficult with traditional western blotting due to variability during membrane transfer. Further, simultaneous phospho-protein and total protein measurements on the same sample are challenging on conventional western blots due to loss of protein and non-uniformity during stripping & reprobing. With Simple Westerns, proteins are immobilized after separation, reducing variability and enabling quantitative measurements of protein abundance. Further, multiplexing is easy using multiple detection channels or RePlexing cycles to enable phospho/total measurements in the same capillary. Total protein measurements can also be made on the same sample for more accurate and robust normalization. Request pricing or more information on Simple Westerns.
The Milo™ Single-Cell Western system helps detect discrete cell signaling states by measuring multiple phospho-proteins in individual cells within a population. Because cells are lysed in Single-Cell Westerns, membrane permeabilization is not required and both intracellular and intranuclear proteins are accessible for antibody probing, making it possible to use phospho- antibodies validated for western blotting and simplifying some challenging intracellular flow assays. This application note demonstrates how Milo adds single cell resolution and heterogeneity information to cell signaling studies traditionally done with conventional western blotting and simplifies challenging phospho-flow assays done with flow cytometry. Request pricing or more information on Single-Cell Westerns.
- “Determination of antibody’s specificity towards phosphorylated protein targets with automated in-capillary enzyme treatment and immunoassay” presented by Dr. Daryl Taketa
- “Profiling Immune cell populations in the tumor microenvironment with complementary capillary-based and single-cell westerns” presented by Dr. Charles Haitjema
- “Novel approach for automated sequential immunoassay for quantitation and characterization of PI3K/AKT pathway proteins” presented by Dr. Jessica Dermody
- “Multiplexed Protein and RNA Quantification on a Single Instrument Harmonizes Multi-omic Analyses of Biomarkers for Immunotherapies and Targeted Therapies in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer” presented by Dr. Chris Heger
- “I was able to screen various antibodies in a single run within half a day. This had previously taken weeks and months using traditional Western blotting methods.” - Krishna C. Yalla, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow
- "Wes is easy to use, convenient, and gives answers quickly. The throughput and system automation is a definite advantage." - Jane Gray, Ph.D., Head of Research Instrumentation, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute
- “Some of the proteins we wanted to detect are low in abundance and it’s really hard to get a good amount of protein for traditional Western blot. The low protein concentrations required by Wes makes it easier to save precious samples ensuring protein detection.” - Debbie Hicks, Ph.D., Faculty Fellow, Wolfson Childhood Cancer Research Centre, Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle
- “Milo permits study of proteins at the single-cell level to understand the heterogeneity among metastatic cells within a population.” - Yi Zhong, M.D., Ph.D., Research Associate, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- "I was looking at two different isoforms of a protein, and it was important to know if the cells were expressing just one versus the other or both in a given cell. That was tricky until Milo came. We’re also getting more relevant information because Milo allows us to look at expression of this protein in tissue biopsies." - Prashant Vijay Thakkar, Ph.D., Postdoctoral associate, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine
Learn how Simple Western and Single-Cell Western are already advancing cancer research.
- Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals the tumor microenvironment and facilitates strategic choices to circumvent treatment failure in a chemorefractory bladder cancer patient
Hye Won Lee, Woosung Chung, Hae-Ock Lee, Da Eun Jeong, Areum Jo, Joung Eun Lim, Jeong Hee Hong, Do-Hyun Nam, Byong Chang Jeong, Se Hoon Park, Kyeung-Min Joo & Woong-Yang Park
Genome Medicine, May 2020; - LRIG1 Is a Pleiotropic Androgen Receptor-Regulated Feedback Tumor Suppressor in Prostate Cancer
Qiuhui Li, Bigang Liu, Hsueh-Ping Chao, Yibing Ji, Yue Lu, Rashid Mehmood, Collene Jeter, Taiping Chen, John R. Moore, Wenqian Li, Can Liu, Kiera Rycaj, Amanda Tracz, Jason Kirk, Tammy Calhoun-Davis, Jie Xiong, Qu Deng, Jiaoti Huang, Barbara A. Foster, Ab
Nature Communications, Dec 2019;
- Simple Western can help you reveal new insights and advance the study of proteins, their function and signaling though reliable, quantitative, and automated workflows. Download this publication spotlight for a glimpse of high impact peer-reviewed cancer research with Simple Western tools.
- Recently, Epigenetic alterations has received a lot of interest in cancer research. In this application note, we discuss method development to investigate histone modifications in single nuclei and understand epigenetic regulation of gene expression at the single-cell level.
- Because of their versatility, FluorChem imagers have been harnessed for applications beyond the Western blot, including DNA gels, colony counting, and imaging Proteome Profile Antibody Arrays from R&D Systems. In this application note, we’ll give you tips on how to image Proteome Profiler Antibody Arrays using chemiluminescent or IR detection on FluorChem M or FluorChem R systems, and show the results from a couple of arrays.