APPLICATIONS

Antibodies are powerful tools used extensively in research, as diagnostics, and increasingly as therapeutics.

Monoclonal antibody can be generated from phage libraries, but those with the highest affinities are produced in animals, predominantly mice, but also rats.

The completion of the human genome project and parallel projects on mice, rats and a variety of plants and micro-organisms provides information on gene organisation and the primary structure of encoded proteins, but scant information on individual gene function or the more complex biological information on protein-protein interactions and modification in specialised cells and tissues.

The vast majority of marketed antibodies are of mouse origin. However mice in particular transgenic mice carrying mutated or abnormally expressed genes provide unique insight into the location, function and interaction of proteins in vivo. Since murine antibodies cannot be raised against most mouse proteins, they remain ineffective tools to locate target murine proteins in mouse tissues and cells in culture. Rat monoclonal antibodies as the alternative source is therefore required.

High affinity rat monoclonal antibodies can be produced using robust technology, at low cost, and in a similar timeframe to their murine counterparts. Rat monoclonal antibodies can be used to study complex protein-protein interactions in mice and in particular mouse models of human diseases.

Rat monoclonal antibodies can also be used in combination with murine antibodies and different secondary antibody combinations for multiple analyses in single solutions using for example FRET and similar technologies. Rat monoclonal antibodies can be used as research or diagnostic tools in an identical manner to any murine antibody.