Our Recombinant Technology

Absolute Antibody specializes in antibody sequencing, engineering and recombinant expression, producing an ever-increasing number of engineered recombinant antibodies at our ISO-certified antibody manufacturing facility. We’ve used our custom-built technology platform to develop a unique recombinant reagents catalog and provide antibody services to customers worldwide, demonstrating we have the technology, expertise and capacity to meet the growing demand for recombinant antibody technology.

Our Antibody Production Platform

Our HEXpress™ antibody expression platform rapidly produces high-quality antibodies at milligram-to-gram scale. This custom-built production platform includes our proprietary vectors, cloning system, and high-yielding mammalian cell lines. We use serum-free transient expression as a faster, more affordable alternative to stable CHO cell line generation, and can scale up to multi-gram quantities in a matter of weeks.

Our production platform can manufacture recombinant antibodies in any species, isotype or format, including multispecifics and fragments, with high purity and low endotoxin levels. This platform has enabled us to produce more than 23,000 different recombinant antibodies, making 1,000 grams of protein in total. In addition, we’ve used the platform to build our own catalog of more than 15,000 antibodies in recombinant engineered formats. For example, check out one catalog clone (anti-EGFR, or Cetuximab) available in more than 30 different off-the-shelf formats.

We’ve continued to increase our antibody production capacity in recent years, developing custom high-throughput purification robots as well as implementing a third production line that can recombinantly manufacture hundreds of different antibodies per week. To learn more about the development of our production platform, view a presentation from our CSO describing how we have scaled and optimized our antibody expression and purification systems.

Our Antibody Engineering Technology

We have developed a proprietary cloning system to enable rapid reformatting of antibodies into almost any format. This allows antibody engineering such as species, isotype or subtype switching; bispecific or trispecific antibodies; antibody fragments; chimerization and humanization; engineered Fc domains; and Fc fusion proteins. Learn more about our engineering services here, or view the 180+ different formats we have created here.

In addition, we don’t just produce existing antibody formats; we create and offer novel antibody engineering technologies to our customers. Our own novel technologies include:

  • Fc Silent™ antibodies, which have a genetically engineered Fc domain with key point mutations that abrogate binding of Fc receptors and abolish ADCC effector function.
  • AbFab2™ antibody fragments, recombinant Fab2 fragments with a proprietary dimerization motif in place of the hinge region to remove contaminating byproducts and improve antibody stability.
  • Prometheus™ antibody humanization, a humanization platform uniquely focused on enhancing antibody manufacturability, leading to increased expression, lower aggregation, and long-term stability and solubility. We have completed more than 145 successful humanization projects to date.

Our Hybridoma Sequencing Approach

We’ve developed a cutting-edge high-throughput (NGS) approach to hybridoma sequencing that delivers all variable domains present within a hybridoma, as well as a full analysis characterizing the hybridoma’s sequences and any heterogeneity present. The technology works on any species or isotype, and can rescue contaminated or non-viable cells.

Hybridoma sequencing protects valuable antibodies against contamination, genetic drift, accidental loss, and other unforeseen circumstances, securing customers’ antibody supply chains long-term. We have a large capacity and high success rate: we have sequenced more than 5,000 hybridomas.  We also offer customers antibody protein sequencing when the hybridoma is unavailable, as well as a pioneering polyclonal sequencing service. Learn more about our sequencing services here.

History of Innovation Timeline

If you want to learn more about the development of our recombinant antibody technology platform, check out our History of Innovation timeline below. View the full-size timeline here.