Proteintech Announces Unique RNA Interference Validation Program

The antibody company Proteintech Group has unveiled plans to validate its full repertoire of pre made antibody products using RNA interference (RNAi) technology. This move will subject its 12,000 strong catalog to a level of scrutiny that surpasses current industry standards, and will enable Proteintech to further strengthen its product pipeline with the researcher in mind.

Antibody specificity has been cited as a major cause of concern in independent literature [1-3] and is ranked as the most important factor for choosing a new antibody supplier [4]. RNAi is the most definitive test of antibody specificity short of using knockout animal models, yet it is not used for routine testing in the antibody industry at present.

Proteintech’s newly established RNAi procedure will be routine for all new products in the future and will be retrospectively applied to existing products in several stages. The procedure employs short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) to significantly reduce the levels of target proteins below the threshold of Western blot detection. Specific antibodies can then be identified by an absence of (or significantly reduced) signal in shRNA-treated samples on a Western blot membrane.

The specificities of over 550 Proteintech antibodies have already been confirmed by its customers using similar RNAi techniques, and published in over 650 journal papers. In rolling out its own RNAi testing, Proteintech will make a gold standard of antibody validation more accessible to all life scientists at a crucial stage: before they commit valuable time and resources to antibody-based experiments.

This move sets a new industry benchmark, with perhaps the further-reaching implication of raising validation standards of commercial antibodies on the whole.

Proteintech co-founder and current CEO Dr. Jason Li commented on the decision:
“From the outset, we built a company for scientists run by scientists. Verifying the specificity of our antibodies using [RNAi] technology and providing these data to the scientific community is simply a continuation of our central ethos.”

“[RNAi] has not been used routinely for antibody validation by the industry before now, for many reasons, but times change: we decided we could and should lead that change.”

References

1. Couchman JR. Commercial antibodies: the good, bad, and really ugly. J Histochem Cytochem.2009;15(1):7–8.
2. Kalyuzhny AE. The dark side of the immunohistochemical moon: industry. J Histochem Cytochem.2009;15(12):1099–1101. doi: 10.1369/jhc.2009.954867.
3. Pradidarcheep W, Labruyere WT, Dabhoiwala NF, Lamers WH. Lack of specificity of commercially available antisera: better specifications needed. J Histochem Cytochem.2008;15(12):1099–1111. doi: 10.1369/jhc.2008.952101.
4. Christi Bird. Antibody User Survey. The Scientist Magazine. 2012 May 1, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32042/title/Antibodies-User-Survey/