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Introduction of Immunogen

An immunogen is an antigen or any substance that can specifically bind to components of the immune system (antibodies, lymphocytes). The term antigen is derived from its ability to induce antibody production. Although all antigens are recognized by specific lymphocytes or antibodies, not every antigen can evoke an immune response. Those antigens that can induce an immune response are called immunogens. Therefore, the immunogen can be defined as a complete antigen composed of macromolecular carriers and epitopes (determinants) that can induce an immune response.

Immunogen Preparation

High-quality and pure immunogens are needed to produce high-quality antibodies. The three characteristics of a substance that must have immunogenicity are exotic, high molecular weight, and chemical complexity.

A key action in developing an antibody that works in the expected analysis is to select an appropriate immunogen. We provide a variety of immunogens for the development of antibodies in different projects.

Protein Antigen Production

We have many methods to produce recombinant proteins or protein domains as pathogen antigens, including bacteria, yeast, insect cells, mammalian cells, and cell-free systems. We also have an expanded inventory of pathogen-related protein products for immunization and screening.

Peptide Antigen Production

Peptides may have the complexity necessary for antigenicity, but their small size usually makes them ineffective as immunogens. Peptides are usually covalently coupled to carrier proteins to ensure that they induce an immune response.

Hapten-Carrier Conjugation

Hapten is a kind of low molecular weight compound, which can bind with antibodies but can not elicit an immune reaction. Therefore, we combine hapten with large carrier immunogenic molecules to induce an immune response.

Carrier Protein Immunogens

The commonly used carrier proteins are bovine serum albumin (BSA), ovalbumin (OVA), keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH), and thyroglobulin (THY). By selecting vectors, we will avoid the phylogenetic homology between the carriers and the protein sources that produce antibodies.

Others

The above-mentioned immunogens are usually used together with adjuvants, which are materials that help stimulate and enhance the immune response against antigens by producing a depot effect. Moreover, nucleic acid immunization and cell immunization are also used as unique and effective methods for producing high-quality monoclonal antibodies against various pathogens. Compared with traditional protein-based immunization methods, DNA/RNA immunization can effectively detect novel immunogen designs without the need to produce or purify proteins from pathogens or use recombinant protein technology and is effective in producing conformation-sensitive targets of monoclonal antibodies.