Scientific Support Says: Don't Let Lot Variation Be the Reason Your Experiment Fails
Nicholas McCurtin is a chemical biologist with a PhD in Chemistry from Tufts University and an expert in PTMs like phosphorylation and ubiquitination. Having run countless western blots and immunoprecipitation experiments, Nicholas brings first-hand technical expertise directly to the bench. Read below for practical, researcher-to-researcher advice in this edition of the Scientific Support Says column.
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Picture this: you followed a recipe and made an amazing meal out of it. You go to make it again, following all of the same steps, but it tastes terrible. Would you still eat it? Absolutely not. You would refresh your ingredients, double check the oven temperature, and so forth to ensure your next batch was as delectable as the first. Why wouldn't you hold your antibodies to the same standard?
The disconnect between the cooking analogy and your antibody applications is that if you’re reading this, you probably aren’t the one “cooking up” your antibody stocks. You leave that responsibility in the hands of a trusted vendor. This puts you in the position where you can’t really “try” the batch of antibody before doing. If your vendor isn’t regularly testing their antibody stocks, you might end up wasting valuable samples and time.
Fortunately, HUABIO’s quality systems standards are here to protect your time. Our methodology at HUABIO guarantees that each fresh lot of antibody is benchmarked against existing, prior lots. While we (like all scientists) follow standard operating protocols, sometimes there are nuances that can influence the performance of antibodies from one lot to the next.
Even though all of the steps are the same, the one variable that we cannot control is the time that has passed since the first production of a given antibody. In that elapsed time, reagents could go bad, a new set of hands could take over part of the protocol, or even something as minuscule as the seasonal humidity in an incubator can differ. Even the most careful scientists are subject to the effects of time!
What HUABIO does differently, however, is rigorous lot-to-lot testing. Returning to our cooking analogy, we “taste” the new batch of antibody to make sure that it will be up to par with how the initial lot performed for your target. That way, you don’t waste samples and time trying to troubleshoot something that lies beyond your bench in the reagent manufacturing process. Consistency is key to advancing scientific research, and we take our duty as your scientific partners seriously, ensuring that you have tools that perform in a predictably robust way.
What drives lot-to-lot variation?
Depending on the type of antibody that you choose, there may be a variety of factors that influence lot-to-lot variation. Many antibodies on the market are produced in hybridoma cells, which are immortalized cell lines that can be stored for very long periods. However, like all cultured cells, hybridomas are susceptible to genetic drift. If hybridoma stocks run low, or if the manufacturer relies on “older” passages of these hybridomas, antibody performance may be vulnerable to change.
In addition to lot-to-lot testing, HUABIO also offers thousands of recombinant antibodies. Unlike traditional hybridomas, recombinant antibodies are sequenced so that the genes that produce your antibodies are known and can be expressed in cell lines beyond hybridomas.This provides robust control over antibody production, offering unrivaled long-term sustainability. [link out to recombinant monoclonal landing page]
Relying on recombinant strategies alone, however, does not control for every factor that could affect antibody performance from lot-to-lot. While our antibody sequences are known and genetic drift is controlled, different batches of production materials and minor ambient environmental changes can still influence the performance of a new lot of recombinant antibodies. Therefore, we test all types of antibodies that pass through our manufacturing pipeline upon producing a new lot. Every antibody we deliver is guaranteed to perform just as well as the first lot ever produced.
At HUABIO, we are committed to providing you with the right toolkit to make the next discovery about the mysteries of life. Questions about the performance of your antibody? Reach out to our human-monitored inbox at [email protected].