Custom antibody production service

1. Designing Antigen

If your biomarker is a protein or peptide, there are 4 common ways to design antigens for it. You can make a peptide or recombinant protein that reflects the epitope(s) you want the antibody to specifically bind to. Or you can immunize with full length proteins or whole cell/tissue lysates, and screen for the clones that are specific to your biomarker(s)--this is for monoclonal only. In general, recombinant protein is the best option as it beats peptide on high immunogenicity, and beats whole protein or cell/tissue on specificity.

2. deciding the discovery platform

There are 4 common platforms for antibody discovery. Polyclonal, hybridoma monoclonal, in vivo recombinant (such as our rabbit monoclonal platform), and phage display.

Cost: polyclonal < hybridoma monoclonal < rabbit recombinant monoclonal = phage display

Application: polyclonal and hybridoma monoclonal are good for RUO, while recombinant monoclonal and phage display are good for DX and therapeutic applications.

If you want antibodies for difficult biomarkers, or for diagnostics or therapeutics, go with the more expensive platforms. If your biomarkers are easy to make antibodies against and you want a fast turnaround time, use the low cost platforms.

3. Choosing the host

Common hosts for antibody production are rabbit and mouse.

In 1980s, scientists including Georges Köhler and César Milstein pioneered the first generation of monoclonal technology, using mouse. Today, many scientists can make mouse monoclonal antibodies.

Rabbit has a better immune system and can generate higher affinity antibodies. Rabbit monoclonal antibodies have earned a reputation for themselves in the past decade and are sought after by researchers and assay developers.

In case of multiplexing staining, you will need antibodies from different hosts to make distinct stains of your biomarkers, and you might need to explore more exotic hosts such as donkeys, guinea pigs, goats, llamas, and sometimes, sharks (dododo, dodododo...).

Click to read a more in-depth article about benefits of rabbit monoclonal.

4. Using The Right Adjuvant

If you are using a platform that involves immunization (i.e. anything other than phage display), you might run into the problem of low immune response from the host. Most of the time the class Freund's Adjuvant is sufficient in eliciting immune response but we have run into situations where a custom adjuvant was the solution to a difficult to make antibody. If you have exhausted everything else, look into adjuvants and you might find something.

5. Selecting the vendors

While the principle of antibody development is not beyond comprehension, there are many uncertainties that go into the process. A lot of these uncertainties can be mitigated with expertise and experience. When selecting vendors, pick the ones with most experience with your particular application is key to success.
Communication is also important, so in your initial contacts with potential vendors, look for the ones who exhibit a customer-service centric culture and good communication habits, because if something goes awry, and more than likely something will, you want a responsive point of contact to be there for you and solve the problems with you.