Santa Cruz sc-246567 (anti-myonectin)

The erythroferrone story is an interesting one. It all started in 2006, when Martin Vokurka and Emanuel Nečas discovered the effect of erythropoiesis on hepcidin expression. In 2014, Léon Kautz, working in the Tomas Ganz laboratory, identified erythroferrone as THE molecule which rapidly decreases hepcidin expression in response to stress erythropoiesis. The success of erythroferrone became however a bit controversial in 2018, when Richard Coffey, also from the Tomas Ganz laboratory, published that chronic EPO treatment decreases hepcidin even in erythroferrone knockout mice. Erythroferrone seemed to be suddenly out of the spotlight, but fortunately Joao Arezes, working in the Hal Drakesmith lab, discovered the interaction of ERFE with BMP6, and described successful in vivo upregulation of hepcidin by anti-erythroferrone antibodies. So erythroferrone is again in.

To the best of our knowledge, reliable in vivo detection of erythroferrone by immunoblot was described thanks to one antibody only: The Santa Cruz goat anti-myonectin polyclonal. Unfortunately, this antibody (as well as the other Santa Cruz polyclonals) has since then been discontinued, and so the blot shown below is only of historical value.

The picture shows in panel A the nice double ERFE band in microsomes isolated from spleens of control mice and erythropoietin-treated mice. In panel B, it is demonstrated that the two bands represent different glycosylation patterns, as PNGase treatment results in a shift of both bands.

In conclusion, a splendid antibody. Alas, a discontinued one…