Custom Polyclonal Antibody Service

User-Supplied Antigens

If you would like to raise antibodies against your own supplied antigen (i.e. fusion protein, recombinant protein, or other) then we can assist you. Customer supplies 1-2mg of the antigen at a concentration of 0.3mg/ml. If considering Affinity Purification please supply 5mg additional. Antigens can be lyophilized or provided in PBS without organic solvents.

Peptide Antigens

For antibody production, if requested by the customer, we normally synthesize 10-15mg of peptides. The synthesized peptides are designed to be stable and soluble in water or PBS. For standard anti-peptide antibody production procedures, we use about 5mg for coupling to KLH and 2mg for coupling to BSA. The rest is kept for Affinity Purification of the antibodies if requested by the customer and any remaining peptide is returned to the customer at the end of the project. Synthetic peptide purity for antibody production is greater than 80% but usually greater than 90%. Mass spectrometry and HPLC analyses are performed to ensure that only high quality peptide is used for antibody production.

General Process (protein or peptide antigens)

We use the standard 90-day protocol for polyclonal antibody production. We use Freund's adjuvent unless the customer prefers otherwise. The price quoted includes the following:

* Pre-immune sera

* Preliminary bleeds after second immunization (6-7 weeks after first immunisation)

* Immune sera 3 months after start of immunization

* Basic testing for level of specific antibodies in the sera if the customer supplies extra antigen (dot-blotting)

You may decide to keep some of the animals for two more injections of antigen to get more antisera. In this case we will send you some sera after each injection plus additional serum when the animal is terminated. This additional service costs extra.

There is an extra charge for peptides that need cysteine coupling. Our price includes preparation of peptide column, two rounds of purification of sera using the same peptide column and testing the level of lg using Coomassie staining of the SDS PAGE gel.

Conjugation of Hapten to Carrier

We offer a variety of peptide-carrier conjugaton options. Traditional hapten-carrier conjugation is available. Choose between several different carriers such as keyhole limpet hemacyanin (KLH), bovine serum albumin (BSA) and ovalbumin (OVA). We also offer the Multiple Antigenic Peptide (MAP) methodology that presents the peptides in alternate, multiple conformations on a branched lysine core to produce antibodies with greater utility across assays. This conjugation scheme provides a better matching of epitopes between the presented peptide and the way the peptides are presented in native protein.

Antibody Purification

We also offer affinity purification of sera using N-terminal peptide (please contact us if you need this service). The highest level of purification is achieved with our peptide-affinity chromatography, which is unique in producing highly functional and specific antibodies with extremely high affinity. We also offer Protein A purification and cross adsorption services. All purified antibodies are analyzed by SDS PAGE, Coomassie staining and absorbance.

Species and recommended amounts of antigen

Animal	Anitgen	Dose minimal-max (mg)	Recommended dose/animal (mg)
Rabbit	Peptide	0,05-1,00	0,20-0,80
Rabbit	Protein	0,10-1,00	0,50-1,00
Guinea pig	Peptide	0,05-0,25	0,10-0,20
Guinea pig	Protein	0,05-0,25	0,15-0,25
Mouse	Peptide	0,01-0,05	0,01-0,03
Mouse	Protein	0,01-0,10	0,03-0,05
Rat	Peptide	0,01-0,15	0,05-0,10
Rat	Protein	0,05-0,15	0,10-0,15
Sheep	Peptide	0,10-1,00	0,30-1,00
Sheep	Protein	0,10-2,00	0,50-2,00
Goat	Peptide	0,10-1,00	0,30-1,00
Goat	Protein	0,10-2,00	0,50-2,00
Chicken	Peptide	0,05-1,00	0,15-0,50
Chicken	Peptide	0,05-1,00	0,25-0,60