NO COLUMN REQUIRED: Exposing monoclonal antibodies to multivalent haptens produces high-molecular-weight complexes that can be easily processed by precipitation. Basar Bilgiçer (center), who developed the technique, gives a demonstration of its simplicity to graduate students Nathan Alves (left) and Michael Handlogten (right) in his lab at the University of Notre Dame. WES EVARD, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
Monoclonal antibodies have become increasingly important in biomedicine in the past decade, not just in research but also in designing novel therapeutics, particularly to treat cancer. The pharmaceutical industry produces roughly 10 tons of monoclonal antibodies each year, and more than half of all drugs in development use them.
Producing these molecules is fairly straightforward: researchers first expose mice to an antigen that spurs the rodents’ immune systems to generate the antibody of interest. They then remove the animals’ antibody-producing immune cells and fuse them to myeloma cells, which grow well in culture, creating hybridomas that act as antibody factories.
However, separating the antibodies from other cellular components in the cell-culture medium can be costly, technically difficult, and time-consuming. Typically, the antibodies must be filtered ...
