At SDIX, we are experts at developing and producing successful antibodies. In this section you'll find a variety of topics, all of which need consideration when developing a successful antibody for your application.
Recombinant protein antigens can be produced in a variety of different
host systems (eg. E. coli, yeast, insect cells, mammalian cells).
Microorganism hosts such as E.coli are generally the most successful,
cost effective and in many cases the source of production may not
significantly impact the success of the resulting antibodies. However,
in cases where the antibody will be used to detect native epitopes such
as in flow cytometry and the target protein contains post-translational
modifications and/or has difficulty folding problems can arise.
Did you know that choosing the right antigen for your antibody can increase the chance of success? At SDIX, we take the time to understand how you'll be using your antibody.
We take the time to understand your problem and work with you to develop the best antibody possible. How? We call it, "Specificity by Design."
It is often important to be able to direct the antibody response to
specific regions of the target protein. Reasons may include targeting
functional regions of interest, discriminating small differences such as
single amino acid substitutions or post-translational modifications. In
addition, if a diverse set of epitopes are required to comprehensively
cover the target protein then it is often better to fragment the protein
up into domains and immunize separately to overcome immune dominance
effects seen the whole protein.
There are many commercial providers of many tens of thousands of
antibodies. At face value one would think that there are antibodies to
most proteins and that they are not a limiting resource for research and
development. However, the real truth is the “dirty little secret” of
the antibody world. It is surprisingly common to purchase a catalog
antibody product and not have it work in the desired application.