Survivin Monoclonal Antibody (STLALYV), eBioscience™, Invitrogen™

Description

• This STLALYV MAb recognizes human survivin (also known as Birc5)
• Survivin is a member of the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family that also includes XIAP, c-IAP1, c-IAP2, and NAIP
• Survivin functions to inhibit caspase activation, thereby leading to negative regulation of apoptosis
• Survivin also plays a critical role in mitosis and cytokinesis where it is expressed only during G2/M and localizes to the mitotic spindle and is found at the cleavage furrow/midplate
• Thus, survivin is highly expressed in tumors and in fetal tissue, but is absent in terminally-differentiated cells and non-proliferating cells
• Deletion of survivin in developing thymocytes as well as in mature T cells showed that survivin is critical for cell division in lymphoid cells but not for inhibition of survival; the same is true for B lymphocytes
• Survivin (IAP4) is the smallest member of the Inhibitors of Apoptosis Protein (IAP) gene family
• The IAPs are involved in multiple cell functions such as cell signaling, cell division, metabolism, and exhibits differential expression in nearly all human cancers, but not in most normal tissues
• IAP family members usually contain multiple baculovirus IAP repeat (BIR) domains, but the Survivin gene encodes proteins with only a single BIR domain
• The encoded proteins also lack a C-terminus RING finger domain
• Gene expression is high during fetal development and in most tumors yet low in adult tissues
• Antisense transcripts are involved in the regulation of survivin’s gene expression
• Survivin is expressed in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle in a cycle-regulated manner
• At the beginning of mitosis, survivin associates with microtubules of the mitotic spindle in a specific and saturable reaction that is regulated by microtubule dynamics
• Disruption of survivin-microtubule interactions results in loss of survivin's anti-apoptosis function and increased caspase-3 activity, a mechanism involved in cell death, during mitosis
• Survivin may counteract a default induction of apoptosis in G2/M phase
• Survivin is also abundantly expressed in brain tissues (astrocytes and some neurons) of adult rats following traumatic brain injury
• Survivin has been found co-expressed with NeuN (mature neuronal marker) and PCNA (a cell cycle protein)
• Survivin might affect regulation of neural cell proliferative responses after brain injury
• At least four transcript variants encoding distinct isoforms have been found for this gene, but the full-length natures of only three of them have been determined
• The overexpression of survivin in cancer may overcome this apoptotic checkpoint and favor aberrant progression of transformed cells through mitosis.