Development of rabbit monoclonal antibodies for Ferret biomarkers (Phase II)

Avantgen, Inc., San Diego CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will generate a panel of highly specific, high affinity monoclonal antibodies against a panel of 7 ferret immune biomarkers. These will also be tested to determine whether they cross react with orthologues from hamsters and bats, two other animal model systems with limited good quality biomarker reagents. In addition, we will also test whether some of the canine immune-oncology rabbit mAbs we have isolated against a panel of 24 biomarkers from an earlier project will cross react with the ferret orthologues. Any successful hits will greatly expand the number of useful clones for researchers in the field of infectious diseases. III. The overall objectives for Phase II are to develop and validate high quality rabbit monoclonal antibody clones against an expanded list of ferret antigens to an additional 7 ferret antigens. In addition, we will fully characterize and validate the antibody clones that were generated during the Phase I study. These clones will be made available as primary and secondary conjugates for third-party researchers for applications such as flow assays, ELISA, ELISpot, and Luminex assays. Ferrets are evolutionarily more closely related to dogs than rodents or humans. We will use our experience gained from an NCI sponsored SBIR Phase II study for the generation rabbit monoclonal antibodies against canine biomarkers to accurately locating correct domains for target antigens whose sequence is derived from draft genomic sequence data for ferret targets (2) and validated cDNAs and/or recombinant proteins are lacking. For the targets whose sequence information is incomplete, we will perform RT-PCR/cDNA synthesis using gene specific primers.