Transgenic Antibody Production

Recombinant monoclonal antibodies were previously cloned into mammalian expression vectors, such as pcDNA3.1  and transiently transfected into HEK293 or COS cells for transgenic expression.

This approach has two disadvantages – (1) HEK293 cells and COS cells are surrogate cell models that lack endogenous antibody production and secretion machinery as in native B cells; (2) Transient transfection lacks the ability to make stable cell lines that can continuously secrete IgG molecules over many generations of cell culture.

BiCell Scientific’s transgenic antibody production service harnesses the advantageous lentiviral transduction ability to simultaneously express IgG heavy chain and light chain at a molecular ratio of 1:1 in naive B cell hybridomas. The resultant B cell hybridomas can produce recombinant antibodies at a similar level to native B cell-myeloma fused hybridomas. The resultant recombinant antibodies undergo similar assembly and modification processes to native antibody proteins.