Antibody Development

Antibodies are developed usually in the general process no matter if the company is developing monoclonal antibodies or polyclonal antibodies.

Steps in Antibody Development

Antibody development is fuelled by the great need for antibodies. Antibodies are needed by researchers for a huge variety of molecular biology methods, as they bind specifically to a protein of interest, thus they are of immense usefulness to identify and quantify protein expression.

Due to the multitude of proteins that are being discovered by the human genome project, despite a huge number of antibodies in catalogs, there are many proteins that do not yet have an antibody developed for them.

Antibody development is required for these custom instances and also for the continued production of antibodies that are already produced.

Antibodies are developed as follows:

Researchers want to study a protein of interest - usually antibodies are needed for detailed study.
The scientists will search to find antibodies in catalogs and the internet, if none exist then custom antibody production is commenced.
The antigen for injection into rabbit, mouse, goat or sheep is obtained from the following methods:
1. Peptide Synthesis
2. Recombinant Protein Production
3. Purification of Native Protein from a Known Source
The antigen whether peptide or protein is processed and purified. The quality of the resulting antibodies are determined by the purity of the proteins or peptide.
Antigen is injected into mouse, rabbit goat or sheep depending on the type of antibody to be produced.
The animal mounts an immune reaction to the antigen and creates antibodies
Two or more injections are required to produce IgG antibodies.
More than two injections increases the quality of the antibody response and titer.
Blood is taken from the animal, serum is extracted from the blood. Antibodies are purified from the serum.
This is a long process that takes months. There are new methods that are quicker as well.