How a chat with abcam about antibodies became a lasting cancer research collaboration
Dr Houssein Abdul Sater approached us about antibody samples in 2016 while opening his first lab. It sparked a research collaboration to improve cancer tissue assessments that’s still going strong.
“I tap on many doors that people think are just not tappable,” says Dr Houssein Adbul Sater. “But if you do, you can discover that they're great collaborators.”
Dr Sater is Regional Director of Research at the Cleveland Clinic Florida, and the founder of the Tumor Immune MicroEnvironment (TIME) Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
There, Dr Sater led the development of tumor microenvironment studies, using IHC multiplexing as a tool to better understand the complexity of tumors from different patients, and to identify biomarkers as part of an effort to stop cancers from blocking the body’s immune system.
In 2016, he decided to tap on abcam’s door, beginning a rich and rewarding partnership that’s still making an impact today.
“We were doing experiments to find out if we could develop panels for certain cancers,” says Dr Sater. “I wanted to know – what were the potential antibodies to give us the right answers?”
"Abcam believed in me from the beginning"
“Abcam believed in me from the beginning – a new scientist without a track record of scientific experiments, or a lot of papers behind him.”
Since his first tap on our door, our partnership has steadily grown. “Abcam introduced me to many people in the field, and I’ve shared a lot of images with abcam over the years. We’ve had a lot of back-and-forth collaborations about certain questions.”
“For example, I’d seen what we call unusual expression, or aberrant expression, in the nuclear expression of PD-L1. I was curious what abcam's experience was. Was it something real, or not?"
Dr Sater and his team found that applying different anti-PD-L1 antibody clones to the same type of tumor tissue prepared for immunostaining produced a variety of staining patterns.
Together, Dr Sater’s team and our science team set out to solve the mystery, establishing a more robust method for detecting PD-L1 using a full panel of anti-PD-L1 antibodies to see how they perform in different cancer tissues.
The results, yet to be published, will be a useful resource for researchers to improve the assessment of PD-L1 in cancer tissue.
“To enable others, you have to collaborate and really be willing to share”
“Given the implications of PD-L1 status for treatment management, it’s important to characterize the antibodies and ensure that the best performing one is used in each tissue,” says Dr Sater.
Building on this collaborative spirit, Dr Sater founded the Multiplex Immunofluorescence Scientific Interest Group at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and advocated for a project to bring all multiplexing experts together to advance the technology.
“Abcam believed in this project for three years before it came to fruition. And now we're going to have the paper out.”
Dr Sater believes that a cure for cancer may one day be possible. “But there’s nothing you can do on your own,” he says.
“I believe in what I call ‘creating momentum’. That means enabling others, who will in turn enable you. To enable others, you have to collaborate, and really be willing to share.”
“I collaborated with Abcam from the moment I opened my first lab, and it was huge.”
Find out more about Dr Sater's research. Explore our oncology range.