The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Office of Cancer Clinical Proteomics Research recently launched the Antibody Characterization Program as part of its Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer (CPTC) initiative. The goal of the program is to “provide antibodies and other critical resources to support protein/peptide measurement and analysis efforts, with a current focus on proteins related to human cancer,” according to a statement. AACC encourages laboratorians to take advantage of this program as a valuable resource in efforts to translate novel cancer biomarkers into clinical practice.
The catalyst for the Antibody Characterization Program was helping to support cancer researchers, who often don’t have access to “affordable, well-characterized, and analytically validated renewable affinity reagents, a problem that could be hindering cancer biomarker discovery and validation, cancer diagnostics development, and therapeutics monitoring,” according to NCI.
The program may be helpful to laboratorians who need monoclonal antibodies developed for particular cancer targets. Those interested should submit a request for antibodies directly to the program no later than July 11. All materials, including target proteins and peptides, should be available when the request is submitted. After that, “your request will then be reviewed and considered based on the justification you provide, and whether the requested antibodies will contribute to existing NCI-funded projects and/or have a broad utility,” according to NCI. “Priority will be given to projects applying antibodies to proteomics research.”
Requests that are accepted will receive up to three monoclonal antibodies, which are “generated for each protein/peptide target and characterized using standardized assays that include, but are not limited to: isotype, SDS-PAGE, western blot, ELISA, immunohistochemistry, immuno-mass spectroscopy, and surface plasmon resonance.”
Get more details about the program.