Learn how our monoclonal antibodies advance discoveries in neurodegenerative diseases. Read this interview with Atlas Antibodies' Principal Scientist, Dr. Eugenia Kuteeva published on Neuro Central, an online resource powered by Future Science Group.
Dr. Kuteeva received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institute (Solna, Sweden) in 2007 and continued her work on neurobiological mechanisms of depression at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral fellow from 2008–2010.
After completing the postdoctoral studies, Dr. Kuteeva moved to the Department of Neuroscience at AstraZeneca, where she worked as a senior scientist in the Histology and Autoradiography team, focusing on pain and analgesia.
Dr. Kuteeva joined the Atlas Antibodies (Stockholm, Sweden) team as a Research Scientist in 2012, established an immunohistochemistry laboratory, and worked with histology-based validation of monoclonal antibodies and biomarker discovery. In 2016, she became a Principal Scientist at Atlas Antibodies, and since 2020, Dr. Kuteeva has been a Principal Scientist in the Protein Technologies team, working with both monoclonal antibody development and pathology applications. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters.
Q1: Please can you tell us more about your research and area(s) of focus?
Dr. Kuteeva: I have broad scientific interests but have mainly been working in the fields of neuropharmacology, neuroanatomy, and behavior. I am particularly interested in neuronal mechanisms underlying dysfunctions of the nervous system, such as mood disorders and neurodegenerative disorders.
Neurodegenerative disorders are pathological conditions that affect neurons and cause their degeneration, both structural and functional. The categorization of neurodegenerative disorders is based on clinical features, as well as the topography of the predominant lesion. This means that defined groups of neurons are affected in different neurodegenerative disorders, for example, dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease or the striatum neurons in Huntington's disease. Despite substantial scientific progress during the last decades, neurodegenerative disorders still represent a challenge to understanding the pathophysiology of disease and available therapies.
My work at Atlas Antibodies focuses to a large degree on monoclonal antibody development. Antibodies are essential reagents in neuroscience research. They help to study proteins involved in pathogenesis and can be used in biomarker tests for the early detection of disease. To be useful and reliable tools, antibodies need to be specific, well-characterized, and validated. Since 2012, we have developed more than 500 monoclonals, focusing to a large extent on neuroscience targets. For this area of research, we have, for example, antibodies targeting various cell types in the nervous systems, including neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia, markers for different neurotransmitter systems, cortical layer markers, neural stem cells, and development markers, as well as a recent panel of antibodies for multiple sclerosis and neuroinflammation.
Q2: What is the Human Protein Atlas and how has it led to the establishment of Atlas Antibodies?
Dr. Kuteeva: The Human Protein Atlas (HPA) is a Swedish academic program, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, aiming to map all human proteins in cells, tissues, and organs using different -omics techniques, such as transcriptomics, mass-spectrometry-based proteomics and, last but not least, antibody-based imaging.
For the project's success, it was critical to have access to highly specific antibodies, which was difficult to obtain from commercial providers. Therefore, a standardized manufacturing process with rigorous quality control was developed by the HPA project, ensuring high levels of specificity and selectivity of the antibodies needed for the mapping studies.
In 2005, the first version of the HPA database was released, which evoked a high interest in these antibodies in the research community. This led to the establishment of Atlas Antibodies, which commercializes rabbit polyclonal antibodies developed by the HPA project in 2006. In 2012, Atlas Antibodies also started in-house development of mouse monoclonal antibodies, followed by the release of PrEST antigen products in 2014 and finally QPrEST mass spectrometry standards in 2019.