Abcore has an industry leading line of ESM-1 antibodies in partnership with Lunginnov. Lunginnov’s antibodies against ESM-1 are of the highest quality, and are highly characterized. The monoclonal antibodies available are listed below, and each endocan antibody product page has an image highlighting the region of reactivity of each clone. Also, most of the antibodies are also available conjugated to biotin.

ESM-1 (endothelial cell specific molecule 1) was discovered in cultured endothelial cells in 1996 [1]. It is expressed as 2 splice variants, full length isoform (exon 1, exon 2, and exon 3) and an isoform which is missing exon 2 (150bp) [2, 3]. ESM-1 is a protein of 50kDa, and it is characterized as a dermatan sulfate proteoglycan. Proteoglycans are molecules which have glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chains attached to the central protein core. Dermatan sulfate proteoglycans have linear GAG chains made up of N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) and of glucuronic acid (GlcA) [4,5].

ESM-1 has been implicated in many important pathways and diseases. First, ESM-1 has been shown to inhibit the ICAM-1:LFA-1 protein-protein interaction, and can then regulate the activity of LFA-1 affecting leukocyte adhesion and transmigration [4,6]. ESM-1 also upregulates the mitogenic activity of VEGF and VEGF related growth factors [4,5].

It is also very interesting that ESM-1 has been discovered as being a key protein involved in both angiogenesis as well as lymphangiogenesis, and it’s activity is increased via VEGF, FGF-2, TNF alpha, and IL1 beta [1,5,7]. Relating to this function, ESM-1 has been shown to be expressed specifically in tip cells during angiogenesis [8,9].

ESM-1 also plays an important role in sepsis. ESM-1 expression is upregulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an important mediator of gram negative bacterial walls involved in sepsis [1,2]. Furthermore, ESM-1 expression is related to the severity and progression of septic states, with expression levels increasing with the severity of sepsis [10,11].