Buying antibody. Opinions?

[Hughthistle]

If you make the purchasing call I'd love your thought on antibody suppliers (Santa Cruz, Abcam, Sigma, whoever ...). Particularly I'd be interested to know why you would use one of these bigger middle-men suppliers over the smaller producers. I'm guessing convenience comes in to play but do you shop around on price?

A lot of the antibodies from the bigger vendors are relabelled anyway, but does it matter if you can't tell the original source?

Hmm. A few questions crammed in there, but any thoughts most welcome.

Many thanks.

[MJD]

In my opinion, it depends on the assay you are using a particular antibody for. But, in general, Cell Signaling makes the best antibodies consistently. Santa Cruz tends to produce antibodies that demonstrate high cross-reactivity, however, they do also produce a few excellent antibodies that I have used in the past. I've used a few Abcam antibodies for immunofluorescence that showed good results. As for Sigma, I've never used any of their antibodies. Some people like to purchase antibodies they can use for multiple purposes for instance western blot and IHC. You can also order samples from some companies that allow you to test the antibodies without paying the full price for a larger aliquot. However, this doesn't allow optimization of the antibody. Cost play a role since some antibodies from certain companies are more expensive than others. However, research is expensive so a more expensive antibody that produces results is worth more than another that doesn't produce results.

[nchao]

Smaller antibody producers offer comprehensive custom antibody packages and immunological services, including epitope prediction, custom antibody synthesis, carrier protein conjugation, immunization and purification, ELISA analysis, antibody labeling, and antibody microarrays. The company offers peptide antigen design, or you can supply your own antigen.

[1DegreeBio]

Perhaps there is a lack of trust in products that are not backed by big names (and big marketing dollars). Like with any other consumer purchased products, there is a moment of hesitation with unestablished brands.

[FabGennix]

Edit: commercial promotion

[ImmunoReagents Inc.]

EDIT: commercial promotion

[danfive]

I buy Abcam and Abnova. Probably buy $100,000 or more each year.

Used a lot of other big names, but these guys are working out very well for me.

Main reason is because they have a large availability & usually matching rec. protein

[1DegreeBio]

@danfive: What if you could source products based on quality? Or reviews from other scientists worldwide? It is fairly common practice that antibodies are repackaged and rebranded within the industry, so there may be some smaller and less known brands that carry (possibly even the original manufacturer) of these products. Would you consider purchasing from other suppliers if you knew their products worked?

Edit: commercial promotion

[danfive]

Originally Posted by 1DegreeBio

@danfive: What if you could source products based on quality? Or reviews from other scientists worldwide? It is fairly common practice that antibodies are repackaged and rebranded within the industry, so there may be some smaller and less known brands that carry (possibly even the original manufacturer) of these products. Would you consider purchasing from other suppliers if you knew their products worked?

Selling factor is availability of antibodies for rare, low expessed proteins.

Priority given to suppliers that have catologs including antibodies from immunogens that are 1. biochemically isolated native proteins (this is rare), 2. full-length recombinant protein, 3. C- and N- termini peptides (at least 1 available). Listing AA sequence of immunogen is great (Abnova does this).

Preference also given to those that list mono and polyclonal antibodies and ship them Ig purified in simple storage buffer (no BSA, little to no glycerol) since I usually need to conjugate the primary antibodies myself.

Quality ratings are great as well as recommendations for applications, cross reactivity info (from companies R&D or user/customer feedback)--Abcam displays this a lot.

I am currently trying different sources for a particular antibody that was discontinued, so I'll give your search engine a try.