Assay developers often face the dilemma of either having to buy a fit-for-purpose antibody from the market, or having to develop one in-house. The latter option is infinitely more expensive although it increases the chance of identifying the correct antibody for the assay. When the commercial stakes are high enough, the investment to develop the fit-for-purpose antibody in-house may be deemed justified. However, most of such projects do not justify such large investments. If the purchase of five different antibodies for side-by-side comparison does not deliver the antibody that is required, the project manager gives up and moves on to the next project. The assay developer company will potentially miss out on large revenues when the best antibody on the market was not identified, for example because it was sold exclusively by a smaller, less visible manufacturer.
If it was so easy to find the right antibody on the market, then why is there a trend to develop antibodies for new assays in-house? The answer is that finding the right antibody on the market is not that easy.
The current market seldom offers one single antibody to one protein. More than often, there are hundreds of offerings of antibodies to any one protein. One single catalogue has multiple antibodies against the same protein already. It gets even more complicated when one antibody features in multiple catalogues by rebranding. Such complication is not always easy to recognize as each vendor offers such antibody with different QC data on their product sheet (Voskuil 2014). Assay developers therefore run the risk of buying and trying side-by-side identical antibodies obtained from different sources.
Assay developers face a multitude of problems when assessing a potential target protein for a new assay. Most biomarkers do not make it to the clinic at all (Voskuil 2015), and so one must be very confident that the assay developers invest in the right biomarker during their R&D work thus making sure of a decent return of investment. The last thing they need is to invest in the wrong antibodies for the right assay.
If the assay developer had a robust system in place to ascertain that the best candidate antibodies are being identified at the start of a new project, precious savings on resources can be obtained. Aeonian Biotech has the right means and knowledge to assist. If we do not have the best candidate fit-for-purpose antibodies on our catalogue, we will make sure to find it in the market on behalf of the assay developer. Not only do we select based on the datasheet (Voskuil 2017); We will subsequently contact the original manufacturer of this antibody to confirm that the data are still representative for the current stock and reproducible from batch-to-batch, and that there is sufficient stock available to meet the customer’s requirements. This way the assay developer will be assured of sustainable supply, also once the kit becomes commercially available.
For certain target proteins, there are simply no good mammalian antibodies to be made. Then antibodies from alternative animal species, or even synthetic antibody-like reagents might be considered. We have an extensive network including providers of such reagents so we can address the needs for such alternatives adequately.
We are happy to discuss your requirements in all confidentiality.
JLA Voskuil (2014) Commercial antibodies and their validation. F1000Research 3:232
J Voskuil (2015) How difficult is the validation of clinical biomarkers? F1000Research 4:101
JLA Voskuil (2017) The challenges with the validation of research antibodies. F1000Research 6: 161