IBL News

We developed DANCE/Fibulin-5 Assay Kit as a biomarker for the elastic fibers of skin, arteries, and lung tissues. DANCE (developmental arteries and neural crest EGF-like) was discovered and named by Professor Tomoyuki Nakamura (Pharmacology, Medical Faculty Kansai Medical University), and is a protein that is strongly expressed in the arteries during the development stage. Later on it was also referred to as Fibulin-5.

The knock out mouse, which does not express the DANCE protein, was experimentally developed and has a phenotype that expresses many signs similar to that of human aging. The failure of elastic fibers to form throughout the entire body, such as sagging skin, has been observed, as well as pulmonary emphysema and tortuous arteries. The expression of these signs in knock out mice indicates that DANCE is an essential protein for forming elastic fibers.

Elastic fibers are extracellular fibers that play a role in the elasticity of tissues with superior stretching ability, such as lungs, arteries, and skin. The dissolution and degradation of these fibers cause a loss of elasticity of tissue, and it has been suggested that this loss is one of the direct causes of aging related diseases. Thus, measuring the concentration of DANCE protein in the body can be applied to research on elastic fiber molecular structures in relation to human aging. The measurement of this concentration is also useful for revealing the causes of diseases that exhibit signs similar to aging.

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