Ximbio's very own Head of portfolio and business development, Dr Hugh Spotswood, attended the annual EuroMAbNet meeting in last month. Read on for his personal update.
The 7th EuroMAbNet meeting took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia and was organised by Vladka Curin Serbec (Blood Transfusion Unit, Ljubljana), Alison Banham (U Oxford) and Giovanna Roncador (CNIO, Madrid). EuroMAbNet provides an arena in which people working in the field of monoclonal antibody production and technology can exchange knowledge, share the most up-to-date methodology and create common strategies to both standardize and improve the production of properly validated monoclonal antibodies. In short the conference is focused on methods and best practises to generate antibodies.
Highlights from the meeting included talks from:
- Collaboratively, EuroMAbNet have published a paper focusing on best practises for monoclonal antibody development and characterisation. There was regular mention of the Bradbury Nature paper that calls for the standardisation of antibodies and proposes the adoption of recombinant forms.
- Serge Muyldermans from the University of Brussels discussed the utility of Nanobodies. Serge holds a number of patents on NBs through his start up company Ablynx.
- Pablo Engel from the University of Barcelona) discussed how to overcome raising mouse antibodies against mouse targets.
- Ben Hoffstrom from the Fred Hutch Institute, Washington, discussed methodologies for developing mAbs using a multiplex approach using four antigens in any one immunisation.
- Ayham Alnabulsi of Vertebrate Antibodies (VAL) discussed VAL’s history and business model when choosing target. VAL were created following a 1984 publication that detailed a U Aberdeen methodology for hybridoma development. In regards target selection typically VAL go for targets that are not widely adopted but could potentially be biomarkers for various cancers.
Finally, the Ximbio presentation was a great success and opportunity to demonstrate how we proactively working with academic scientists who have expertise in antibody production and validation within the life science community.
EuroMAbNet represents the first European network of laboratories linked to academic Institutions, each having an internationally recognized reputation in the production of monoclonal antibodies. The current President Dr Giovanna Roncador and Vice President Prof Alison Banham are both among the group’s founder members. EuroMAbNet spans 11 European countries and members possess a wealth of expertise in monoclonal antibody technology, ranging from identification and production of immunogens, the production of fully validated antibodies and their use as research tools, diagnostic/prognostic reagents and therapeutics.
EuroMAbNet meetings take place annually and provide a forum for a variety of topics to be discussed. These range from developing strategies in accurate antibody validation and discussion around cutting edge methodology in antibody production and technology. A recent aim of the EuroMAbNet is to proactively promote strategies for antibody validation to combat poorly characterised reagents perpetuating reproducibility issues in scientific studies. EuroMAbNet article and guidelines are available in the EuroMAbNet webpage (http://www.euromabnet.com/guidelines/ ) be invaluable to researchers by providing them with tools to identify and validate antibodies from other sources.
LATEST NEWS
XIMBIO PARTNERS WITH UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA JOINS THE XIMBIO COMMUNITY
XIMBIO ARE RECRUITING!
HAVE YOU REGISTERED?
Join the ever-growing global Ximbio community. Register and receive updates about new reagents, institutes and new features being added to the website.