Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour20
The antibody issue
1975 was the year where Kohler and Milstein initiated the current era of antibody production, by introducing the hybridoma technology.
Reference:
Liu JK1. The history of monoclonal antibody development - Progress, remaining challenges and future innovations. 2014 Sep 11;3(4):113-6.
DOI: 10.1016/j.amsu.2014.09.001.
[PubMed]
As mentioned in the introduction, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are frequently used for numerous purposes in research and in medical aspects. The demand is continuously growing and the production market is exponentially rising.
Primarily because of their ability to perform post-translational modifications (PTM), most often mammalian cells are used for the production. Especially N-glycosylation is an important step, resulting in avoidance of the human immune system, i.e. minimising immunogenicity. This makes the antibodies usable in clinical aspects. Even though this ability clearly prompts the use of mammalian cells, some drawbacks is often disregarded, such as being cumbersome and needy to work with. Foremost requirements for a system capable of making mAbs are high growth rate and high production yield. And that is exactly why we thought of Escherichia Coli as an appropriate alternative.