Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are widely used in many fields of research e.g. microbiology, cell biology and biochemistry. They have several purposes in research such as purifying molecules and as molecular tags.
The process of producing mAbs in the laboratory goes as follows. Antigen A is repeatedly injected into an animal (usually a mouse, rabbit, sheep or goat), at intervals of several weeks (immunization).
After a couple of weeks B-lymphocytes stimulated by antigen A secrete large amounts of anti-A antibodies. The antibodies can then be extracted from the bloodstream. B-cells stimulated by antigen A will divide for some time but only till a certain limit. Therefore it is necessary to fuse the B cell, from the animal injected with antigen, with a tumor cell, resulting in an indefinitely dividing hybrid cell. This hybrid secretes anti-A antibodies of a single type (i.e. monoclonal).
Since this process is prolonged and involves the destiny of several animals many researchers have been looking for an alternative method and we did to. Thus we are developing a system with the purpose of producing peptide aptamers that function alternatively to antibodies used until now.