Under the supervision of the Dean of the College of Pharmacy, Professor Dr. Sarmed H. Kathem Alkhateeb, the Continuing Education Unit at the University of Baghdad/College of Pharmacy held an electronic workshop entitled “The Applications of Western Blot”, delivered by Lecturer Dr. Aminah Ali Abid, a faculty member at the Clinical Laboratory Sciences Department.
The workshop aimed to clarify the applications of Western blot in detecting and estimating the size and the amount of a particular protein in a mixture of proteins.
The workshop included several topics, including an introduction to Western blot, which is a widely used laboratory technique in cancer and disease research that enables researchers to compare protein profiles between normal and cancerous tissues, which helps identify the pathogenic pathways involved in the development of cancer and other common diseases. In addition, the lecturer pointed out that the application of Western blot is not limited to detecting protein expression in tissue samples, but it is also used to assess the activation and post-translational modifications of proteins involved in cancer and disease progression, which helps in the development of potential therapeutic targets. Also, the workshop involved explaining the principle of Western blot, the reagents required for preparing its solutions, the procedure steps of this technique and the methods used in detecting the target protein in the tested samples.
The workshop concluded that Western blot is not only a tool for detecting proteins, but also an accurate analytical method that can contribute to the understanding of disease mechanisms and the development of treatments, making it an essential tool in modern biomedical research.