Production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) is central to all efforts at DxDiscovery. MAb production begins with immunization of a mouse with an antigen. Several weeks after immunization, spleen cells are harvested. B cells in the spleen produce antibody but cannot grow in culture. The spleen cells are fused with cells of a myeloma line. The myeloma cells cannot produce antibody, but they will grow in culture. The two cells (spleen cells and myeloma cells) are fused together to produce a hybrid cell (hybridoma) that has the best properties of both cells – the hybridoma grows in culture and makes antibody.
Hybridoma cells are cloned to ensure that all cells in the culture are making exactly the same mAbs. Once cloned, the cells can be mass produced in tissue culture to make large amounts of the mAbs. Cell lines made in this manner are immortal; they can be frozen for years.
DxDiscovery has extensive experience in making mAbs to polysaccharides and proteins. These mAbs are the key reagents for diagnostic and therapeutic development. A core strength of DxDiscovery is use of proprietary strategies for immunization of mice and for screening of hybridomas to produce mAbs that are ideally suited for downstream applications. MAbs that are well suited for other purposes such as therapeutics may not be well suited for the rigors of a lateral flow immunoassay (LFA). In another example, mAbs that function well in ELISA may not function well in LFA and vice versa.