Contract Sheep Monoclonal Antibody Creation Bioventix operates a successful service whereby a panel of sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs) can be created against an antigen of the Customer’s choice. Contracts operate in a stepwise structure with customer authorisations to proceed to the next step. Please contact us for further details. Sheep Immunisations and Polyclonal Antibody Analysis Only 5-10mg of antigen is required for sheep immunisations and all subsequent assay requirements. Sheep are immunised for a total of three months and the serum of each sheep is analysed for antibody titre and affinity by immunoassay, which are developed at Bioventix as part of the project.   Hybridoma Fusions and ELISA Screens Individual sheep are selected for B-cell harvest and multiple fusions. Fusions are screened by ELISA and candidates cloned by conventional dilution methods. It takes three months to produce a panel of 10-20 supernatants from different antibodies for analysis by Bioventix and the customer. Production and Purification of Milligram Quantities of SMAs Antibodies selected by Bioventix and/or the customer are cloned further to achieve stable cell lines from which purified antibodies can be derived. It takes 2-3 months to produce a panel of 5mg quantities for further development at the customer.   Scale-up to Larger Quantities as Required Bioventix has a number of hollow fibre bioreactor systems for the production of gram quantities of purified SMAs for commercial use. Bulk antibody harvests are purified by Protein A to make antibodies of a purity ideal for commercial use in diagnostics. Bioventix’s quality management systems for SMA production have been inspected and audited by a number of multinational diagnostics companies who are supplied with commercial quantities of product. Click to enlarge