GeneTex’s robust recombinant antibody production platform

GeneTex is a multinational research antibody manufacturer with 25 years of experience designing, producing, and validating antibodies for the biomedical research community. The company established its reputation with well-cited antibodies generated in the research labs of its founders, and grew to be a major supplier of conventional polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies for academic scientists. The GeneTex catalog includes antibody reagents for almost all fields of biomedicine, with just over 50,000 products.

Over the last several years, GeneTex has come to acknowledge the limitations and reproducibility issues associated with polyclonal antibody lot variability and clone instability of hybridoma-based monoclonal antibodies. To address these challenges, the company made the commitment to pivot its production to making recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibodies exclusively. This was done in conjunction with the complete reassessment of its reagent validation protocols and culminated in the development of a rigorous “five pillar” approach based on definitive knockout and knockdown technology (Uhlen et al., 2016).

GeneTex’s recombinant antibody production protocol employs a multi-parameter FACS-based approach to isolate antigen-specific IgG⁺ memory B cells from an immunized animal with subsequent cloning of the antibody variable-region genes into an IgG backbone and expression in mammalian cells (Starkie et al., 2016). This protocol is very rapid and can be completed in weeks and also affords the opportunity to identify antibodies with diverse capabilities in various applications (see below). Importantly, it allows cloning of the heavy and light chains from the same B cell, thereby preserving natural pairing. And once cloned, the supply of a given recombinant antibody is inexhaustible with exceptional reproducibility. In addition, the antibodies can be further engineered in different host “backbones”, thereby increasing their application flexibility.

GeneTex’s recombinant antibody production technology and enhanced validation protocols represent a major investment by the company to bring its customers outstanding products to accelerate their research. This includes efforts to develop reagents with superior specificity and consistency for novel diagnostics. Look for new recombinant antibodies to be continuously added to the GeneTex catalog.