Designing antibodies? Difficulties? Reasons?

[Genecks]

Hello, all.

I've recently been assigned the task of making a decent antibody for amyloid precursor protein. As I have been reading as of late, there is considerable demand for decent antibodies, as people don't tend to like what comes from industry.

First off, why?

Does industry not put enough effort into making antibodies, such as generating one generation of a mouse population to produce antibodies, thus the search for better antibodies beyond that one generation does not occur?

Is it that industry isn't really looking for better antibodies?

The individual I'm working for at the moment doesn't seem to like the current quality of antibody on the market and being used for our research, so I've been assigned to make antibodies.

As of late, I've been reading the book Making and Using Antibodies: A Practical Handbook.

It seems like there are two reasonable ways to make antibodies: Mutation/radiation/conjure-code OR to inject animals with the immunogen and have the animals keep producing antibodies.

It seems to me that animals that could live a long time in order to produce antibodies might be the best bet in terms of finding a better antibody with binding affinity. Am I right on this?

Also, I suspect if a person was a super scientist with an insane knowledge of biophysics, chemistry, and protein knowledge, a person could just design a better antibody from code... but I suspect that would mean knowing the protein being research, and the protein being research in this case is ... the structure is not completely known...

So, why do scientists think most antibodies are poor? Are they? Why?

Genecks
- B.S. Neuroscience