Can antibodies be “vegan”? A guide through the maze of today’s antibody generation methods

Abstract

There is no doubt that today’s life sciences would look very different without the availability of millions of research antibody products. Nevertheless, the use of antibody reagents that are poorly characterized has led to the publication of false or misleading results. The use of laboratory animals to produce research antibodies has also been criticized. Surprisingly, both problems can be addressed with the same technology. This review charts today’s maze of different antibody formats and the various methods for antibody production and their interconnections, ultimately concluding that sequence-defined recombinant antibodies offer a clear path to both improved quality of experimental data and reduced use of animals.

Keywords

• Monoclonal antibodies
• polyclonal antibodies
• recombinant antibodies
• multiclonal antibodies
• non-animal derived antibodies, phage display, 3R, immunoglobulin, library, somatic hypermutation