HIGHLY SPECIFIC ANTIBODIES FOR USE IN SANDWICH-TYPE ANTIBODY MICRO ARRAY ANALYSES OF COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES

摘要

Antibody microarrays are the protein complement of DNA microarrays for proteome research and medical protein diagnostics. Antibodies represent ideal protein capture molecules due to their high robustness as well as their availability in almost unlimited diversity. However, a high specificity against the protein antigen is a prerequisite for use in antibody microarrays . Even subtle cross-reactivities to other proteins may severely limit the performance of this analytical tool, particularly when complex biological samples are to be analysed. This is even more eminent when two antibodies for capture and detection of the same analyte protein are required in a sandwich-type assay. To address this need and also to open new sources for highly specific antibodies we decided to exploit the comprehensive and diverse antibody pools available from polyclonal sera of immunized animals.