Monoclonal Antibody Core Facility
The Monoclonal Antibody Facility (MABF) provides custom monoclonal antibody production and purification to researchers at MD Anderson and beyond.
The main focus of the facility is to produce high-affinity antibodies in a high-throughput and effective manner, while concentrating on quality of product and service, as well as saving time and money for potential users.
Investigators wishing to employ the services of the MABF should contact Long Vien at email@example.com (713-563-3223) or Laura Bover at firstname.lastname@example.org (713-563-3301) to set up a meeting to plan the project strategy. In addition, investigators must provide a completed MABF services request form (doc) and e-mail it to Long Vien.
What Are Monoclonal Antibodies?
In the early 1970s, the idea of producing identical antibodies specific to a given antigen started to arise among the scientific community. It was successfully accomplished when Georges Köhler, César Milstein and Niels Kaj Jerne created the process of producing monoclonal antibodies in 1975. They shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 for the discovery.
By definition, "monoclonal antibodies (mAb) are antibodies that are identical because they were produced by one type of immune cell and are all clones of a single parent cell. Given (almost) any substance, it is possible to create monoclonal antibodies that specifically bind to that substance; they can serve to detect or purify that substance."
The key idea was to use a line of myeloma cells that had lost their ability to secrete antibodies, come up with a technique to fuse these cells with healthy antibody producing B-cells and be able to select for the successfully fused cells. mAbs have become an essential tool in biochemistry, molecular biology and medicine. Basic and clinical researchers have been taking advantage of them for a wide range of uses.
Core Grant Citation
This facility is funded by NCI # CA16672. Publications should cite the Core grant in the acknowledgment section, if publications use antibodies or data generated by the Core facility. Two copies of the publication acknowledging the Core grant should also be submitted to the Monoclonal Antibody Core Facility.