Specific affinity reagents are useful tools to explore protein expression profiles such as relative expression patterns in different tissues or biofluid samples in normal and disease states. The objective of WP6 is to provide gene specific antibody reagents for use with the affinity proteomic technology platforms being developed in WP7 and to develop antibodies for serum depletion studies. MolPAGE partners are carrying out two types of antibody production;

1. The generation of multiple robust Affibody^® molecules to the most abundant human serum proteins; these will be used in a multi-use matrix of affibodies for depletion of major serum proteins from clinical samples. The consortium will evaluate the benefits of reducing the complexity of serum samples for analysis by MolPAGE proteomic platforms from WP5 and WP7.
   
2. The generation of a set of mono-specific affinity purified antibodies via the Human Proteome Resource pipeline; the production process for these antibodies is described here (www.proteinatlas.org/desc.php) and follows a strategy based on the generation of polyclonal antibodies by immunization with short Protein Epitope Signature Tags (PrESTs), which are then affinity purified using the target protein as ligand. For the MolPAGE programme, Protein Epitope Signature Tags (PrESTs) have been designed from the sequence of 200(+) candidate genes proposed by consortium partners. [More]