True optimisation of antibodies for immunohistochemistry

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is often considered something of a "black art". As well as requiring a high degree of knowledge of the techniques involved, it generally requires an element of trial and error to have a given antibody work well with a given tissue and frequently necessitates the use of antibodies and techniques tailored to each individual project or diagnostic application.

This means, there is no one specific protocol for IHC that can be used regularly.

Antibody optimisation for IHC involves a range of tests in order to find an antibodies optimal staining conditions. Each antigen has a preferred method of antigen retrieval such as Heat Induced Epitope Retrieval (HIER) using acidic Citrate or TRIS-EDTA base buffers, as well as an enzymatic retrieval process. However the majority of antigens need an alkaline pre-treatment method for optimal staining. Additionally each antibody has an optimal concentration when used, depending on the affinity of paratope and epitope, as well as the expression level of the antigen.

Antibodies optimised with tissues that express high levels of antigen may prove inadequate when staining tissues with low antigen expression. For this reason it is necessary to optimise each antibody for a variety of tissue types.

Additionally from a clinical perspective, antibodies must be specific with high affinity towards their epitopes, whilst remaining flexible to use and offering good LOT consistency.

This is the basis of our Optibodies range with each antibody optimised for each use.

Optibodies are a range of carefully tested, top quality antibodies for Immunohistochemistry that has been carefully optimised and fine-tuned for both research and clinical IHC using NordiQC recommended control tissues and criteria.

Optibodies ^(TM) from Nordic Biosite - Optimal Antibodies for Optimal Immunohistochemistry

Details of the full Optibodies antibody range are available here.

EpCAM

Her2

PDL1

SYP