Cost-effective antibody production is a critical need for the development of mAb-based therapeutics. The high cost of mAbs is a result of numerous factors, including a complex manufacturing process, strict regulatory compliance, expensive raw materials and significant infrastructure investments. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the costs of antibody production, and a discussion of strategies for reducing these costs through innovation.
Cost-Effective Antibody Production: High-Quality Solutions at Affordable Prices
Antibody production is a complex process that requires mammalian cell culture and a series of purification steps. During this process, the antibody secreted by the cells must be isolated and separated from cellular debris and impurities using centrifugation, filtration and precipitation methods. The isolation of the mAb from these impurities can be a costly step in mAb production. This is primarily due to the fact that mammalian cells contain many different proteins, and thus a high probability of cross-reactivity between the antibodies and other protein molecules in the crude antibody mixture. Affinity chromatography can be used to improve the separation of these mAbs by binding them with a specific ligand on a solid support, resulting in the capture of the desired antibody and elimination of unwanted impurities.
Antibody screening and selection techniques such as phage display, hybridoma technology and single B cell cloning are also expensive and require a high level of automation, precision and reagents to be efficiently implemented. Finally, sequence determination of promising antibodies is a time intensive and labor-intensive step that involves next generation sequencing technologies and bioinformatics analysis.