Trusted quality

Delivering high-quality products is fundamental for us.
Our comprehensive Quality Management System ensures that our customers receive the product they need.

Belgian facilities

Located in Belgium, our State-of-the-art facilities enable us to produce from small to very large batches of monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies.

Our facilities are equipped with advanced technologies for antibody production, operated by experienced scientists.

Our Quality system

Animal welfare

The facilities comply with the highest standards for animal welfare, including FELASA, GLP, GMP, BELAC, UK Home Office Animals Scientific Procedures Act.

 

Discover our animal facilities

GMP

Antibodies fragments can be produced in our GMP biomanufacturing facilities, accredited by Belgian Health Authorities. They are equipped with 4 GMP Fermentation suites (from 80 L to 2200 L fermenters).

 

GMP Service Overview

FAQs

The choice of animal is dependent on practical factors such as the source of the antigen, quantity of serum required for research, the titer of the antibody and the time required to generate antibodies. Antigens coming from rabbits should be injected into pigs or chickens rather than into rabbits. Mammalian proteins can be injected into chickens to provide high titer antibodies, which have the advantage of being IgY type antibodies.

Program duration: generally, the smaller the animal the shorter the program duration and the smaller the volumes of serum received. As antigenic response varies from animal to animal of the same species, repeating a immunization program is more risky than choosing a larger animal for antibody production to ensure sufficient material. It is recommended to immunize at least 2 animals to ensure a high quality antibody at the end of the program.

The immune response depends on the antigen but also on the host. Large animals provide the advantage of allowing larger bleeds but their immune response is generally lower than small animals. The following table indicates the expected bleed volume in various hosts.

Pre-immune Small Bleed Large
bleed
Final bleed Comment
Mouse 40-70 μL 40-70 μL 40-70 μL 300-500 μL Good to test antigenicity
Guinea
pig
1 mL 1 mL 2-3 mL 10-15 mL For small serum volumes
Rat 2 mL 2 mL 2 mL 5 mL For small serum volumes
Chicken 1 egg ± 8-10 eggs* ± 8-10 eggs* ± 8-10 eggs* For mammalian antigens
and large quantities of
Antibodies, 4 eggs =
Rabbit 2 mL 2 mL 20-25 mL 50-70 mL For most applications
Goat 2 mL 2 mL 250 mL 1000 mL For large batch volumes
Sheep 2 mL 2 mL 250 mL 1000 mL For large batch volumes
Llama 2 mL 2 mL 250 mL 1000 mL Single chain antibodies
and for large batch
volumes

All programs can be extended by adding additional immunizations and monitoring response by ELISA. When sufficient titer is present the final bleed can be ordered.

Antibody production can be done in as short a time as 2 months although we recommend 3 months for most hosts.

There are two main types of purifications; the first is to concentrate the antibodies from the other proteins found in serum, the other is to specifically concentrate the antibody of interest. The first case can be done with protein A or protein G columns. Protein A columns are useful for concentrating polyclonal antibodies from human, rabbit, horse, pig, guinea pig, dog while protein G columns are useful for concentrating polyclonal antibodies from mouse, rat and goat sources. Affinity purification to solely concentrate the antibody of interest can be done by coupling the peptide or the purified protein to a resin. The affinity of the antibody for the antigen will cause the retention of the desire antibody. This is then eluted with a salt or pH gradient.