ABSTRACT
Recombinant techniques enable production of protein immunogens by heterologous expression, thereby avoiding the need to culture large amounts of clinical material and the risks associated with handling such material. DNA immunisation is another recombinant enabling technology that bypasses expression and purification steps by co-opting the host animals’ translational machinery to produce the target protein in vivo. The ability to readily modularise, affinity mature, format and easily express in heterologous expression systems make recombinant antibodies a rich resource for the very wide array of modern diagnostic challenges. At a time when high affinity and specificity are almost taken for granted, recombinant antibodies offer many additional inherent advantages. One of the best established approaches in the immunoassay toolbox involves the exploitation of the natural immune response of an animal by exposing it to an analyte of interest. Typically, this involved purifying the designated proteinaceous target analyte and injectin.
