What's Happening at NeoClone Biotechnology

You're probably wondering, "Now that BioLegend owns all your former catalog products, what the heck are you doing up there in Madison?" I'm glad you asked. We're still making great monoclonal antibodies, of course! NeoClone has been making custom murine antibodies via hybridoma technology for years. In fact, that's where our catalog came from in the first place! We decided that we needed to return our focus to custom projects, especially the really difficult targets that researchers had been bringing us all along. You know, the targets that other companies couldn't make due to problems with tolerance or toxicity or bizarre secondary structures.
Then we decided to branch out into other methods of generating antibodies. We brought on new staff with years of experience in Antibody Phage Display and Camelid VHH antibodies. We've been upping our game in the Bioinformatics arena as well, giving us an edge in determining the best way to make YOUR antibody. Unlike other antibody development companies, we're not tied to one particular method. In the world of antibody development, one size does NOT fit all.
So, you tell us what you want.
We'll make sure we get it for you.

Antibody Phage Display (scFv)

NeoClone is a world-class custom antibody development company, having discovered hundreds of antibodies for our clients.  But there are very difficult targets out there that hybridoma technology alone can’t solve. So we added antibody phage display capabilities to help us develop the diverse and specific antibody repertoire to difficult targets that you need. Our team now has over 15 years of scFv phage antibody and recombinant antibody experience.

Greater Diversity, Faster Answers

One of the advantages of phage display is the enormous diversity of variant antibody genes that can be represented in a phage library, even to relatively non-immunogenic targets. NeoClone’s antibody phage display service provides a means of rapidly screening large numbers of scFv in our antibody gene libraries against potential binding partners in only 2 weeks.  Once promising clones are identified, we can clone, express and sequence the scFv antibodies for your further evaluation. Based on your needs, we can engineer the antibody further for expression in mammalian cells, affinity maturation or other optimization steps. NeoClone can also construct new scFv phage libraries from immunized or naïve donors from several species.

Antibody Phage Display Screening

NeoClone's proprietary antibody phage display screening method allows for efficient, high throughput identification of rare binders with distinctive characteristics required for a specific application. NeoClone is able to generate scFv antibodies that target antigens that have traditionally been difficult to attain, including Post-Translationally Modified peptides (PTMs) such as acetylated or phosphorylated antigens. In addition, NeoClone can express the specific phage as scFv-Fc in mammalian cell culture or by periplasmic expression in bacteria.

The image below shows the results of screening for a phospho-peptide specific scFv in one of our antibody phage display libraries. Four individual clones recognized the phospho-peptide (P-Myb) but not the un-phosphorylated peptide (Myb).

Antibody Phage Display Library Construction

How does that work? Click on the image below for an overview.

C. M. Hammers & J. R. Stanley, Journal of Investigative Dermatology (2013) 134, e17. doi:10.1038/jid.2013.521

If you are interested in starting an antibody project with NeoClone, please  contact us.
Additional references can be found here and here.

About NeoClone

Through a lot of hard work, a license from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and a desire to have an impact on human health, NeoClone was founded in 1999 by three University of Wisconsin scientists who recognized the need for better ways to discover and develop antibodies. As they refined the process to make better antibodies (what is now the NeoAb process), they established a service business to make high-quality antibodies for others.

By 2002 the founders realized a need to bring in business expertise to help grow the company by leveraging its ability to make excellent antibodies. This change in direction is the foundation of what NeoClone is today - a company focused on developing high quality antibodies for sale as reagents and establishing partnerships and collaborations to develop diagnostics. As a result of these efforts, we now have over 1000 customers in 30+ countries.

To poise ourselves for future success, we've continued to refine our antibody development abilities. In 2014, we added antibody phage display technology to help us develop the diverse and specific antibody repertoire to certain difficult targets that might be difficult to achieve with hybridoma technology alone. We have developed camelid (VHH) antibody capabilities so we can service the rapidly growing therapeutics market. We have been offering this service since 2015.

Want to know more? Deven McGlenn, NeoClone's CEO, will be happy to help.