Badrilla: Phosphospecific antibodies to cardiovascular targets
This week we focus on Badrilla which specialises in the generation and validation of phosphospecific antibodies to cardiovascular targets. In addition Badrilla is developing antibodies to fluorescent proteins. They are based in Leeds, UK and serve customers direct from the UK with the help of distributors Wako (in Japan) and Cedarlane Labs (in Canada & USA).
The Badrilla Approach
Professor John Colyer, a founder of Badrilla explains what makes their antibodies special,
“we typically make antibodies to targets that are not covered by other manufacturers. We apply exacting standards to the manufacture and characterisation of products – as though the antibodies were being made for our own research program. We affinity purify antibodies to IgG protein molecules and stabilise them in dry form so that they have long shelf lives, can be shipped quickly and economically around the world, and reach your lab in perfect condition”.
“To illustrate our approach, we design our immunogen carefully, using a series of bioinformatics tools to meet precise criteria explicitly (isoform specific Ab, or phospho-site specific, etc.). We purify our immunogen to homogeneity, analysing this rigorously with mass spectrometry. We immunise animals that display no or few pre-immune antibodies in a variety of tissue systems, and validate antibodies in western blot and immunomicroscopy platforms using relevant biomedical specimens – optimising working dilutions and publishing large amounts of exemplar data describing these steps. For most of our antibodies, we then prepare products as protein A purified IgG proteins and freeze dry these with a stabiliser cocktail to maximise their stability in shipping and to maximise their shelf life”.
“What does all this mean for the user? Many good things: Badrilla antibodies are used at high working dilution, they are specific to the intended molecular target format (protein, phosphoprotein as appropriate), and recognise no or few non-specific bands in cardiovascular samples”.
A new mEOS2 antibody for superresolution microscopy
When asked to highlight one antibody Dr Gavin Allsop from Badrilla chose their new mEOS2 antibody. He explains “In December 2012, Badrilla launched an antibody to mEOS2, the first such antibody available to the research community. mEOS2 is a fluorescent protein derived from Anthozoa that converts from green to red emission upon photostimulation. It is a monomeric form of the original fluorescent protein and is proving to be a key label for super resolution microscopy (studies of cellular ultra structure and protein trafficking)”.
“A010-mEOS2 is a protein A affinity purified rabbit polyclonal antibody raised against mEOS2 expressed in E.coli and purified to homogeneity. It has been tested by some of the leading researchers in the field and shown to recognise mEOS2 fusion proteins with high sensitivity and specificity in western blotting and immunofluorescence microscopy applications”.
CiteAb now lists all of Badrilla’s antibodies. We are always looking for new companies and academics to share their antibody data with us, so if you have antibodies that are not listed on CiteAb do get in touch.
~ The CiteAb Team
