Advantages and Disadvantages of Polyclonal Antibodies as offered by Capralogics Inc.

Various companies now provide “rabbit anti-llama HRP” for research purposes. There are several advantages and disadvantages in polyclonal antibodies based on their multi-epitope specificity.

The advantages are several in nature.  For example, this type of production offers a short turn around time and lower cost.  The antibodies are highly stable and tolerant of pH and buffer changers.  They offer a high affinity.  Because the antibodies are capable of binding to more than one epitope, they can amplify the signal from a target protein, even in the presence of a low expression level, making an ideal situation for immunoprecipitation and chromatin immunoprecipitation.

There are some disadvantages admittedly.  These include variability from batch to batch and the problem of multiple epitopes requiring a check of immunogen sequence for the existence of cross-reactivity. 

There is a different between polyclonal antibodies andmonoclonal antibodies in diagnostic studies.  It is difficult to say which is better because the characteristics of these antibodies needs to be considered.  Polyclonal antibodies are beter reagents in diagnostic assays and hemagglutination reactions largely because of their capability to recognize the differing epitopes in a target molecule. The most opportune way to use polyclonal antibodies is detecting the unknown antigens. Polyclonal antibodies can be used as a secondary antibody in immunoassays.  This is the case for ELISA, western blotting, microarray assays, immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry. Their uniquejob is to attach to epitopes and amplify their signal, allowing for more accurate detection.

Monoclonal antibodies can be used as primary antibodies in immunoassays because theybind to only one epitope of an antigen. In clinical applications, certain disadvantages of using each type of antibody no longer exist as companies now purify polyclonal antibodies to reduce the amount of cross-reactivity in assays. The mixing of monoclonal antibodies yields the capture of several epitopes while expanding specificity.

Polyclonal antibodies do not work as well as monoclonal antibodies in treating cancer cells because they do not present specificity nor the required degree of cross reactivity. Research now indicates that polyclonal antibody therapy could be helpful in treating certain diseases and may even work as an immunosuppressant in patients who have had a transplant.

Visit www.capralogics.com to inquire about any type of Custom Antibody Development, Antibody Laboratory Services, or Antibody Products such as rabbit anti-llama.