Editor's Note: This is the first entry in a series we're publishing as part of celebrating our 30th year of operation. As we reflect on three decades of serving the antibody discovery needs of innovators in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, we're spotlighting some of the relationships we've forged. Scientific discovery is always a collaborative process, and our labs have been home to some terrific collaborations over the years.
From its earliest days of operation, Antibody Solutions has been on the lookout for ways to deliver the best possible discovery services for our clients. This involves seeking out, testing, and – if appropriate – adopting new and improved technologies as they become available. Over our three decades of operation, we’ve built a broad, flexible platform of discovery services. In addition to our internal team of experts, the vendors and service providers that we work with on a regular basis have provided us with smart, effective, and innovative materials that have helped us maintain our high quality of standards.
At the time of Antibody Solutions' founding thirty years ago, ascites was the prevailing method for producing antibodies from hybridoma cell lines. The ascites model, which had been common practice for the previous couple of decades, was capable of producing highly concentrated monoclonal antibody (mAb) without the need for supplementary procedures that could be detrimental to the final product. Yet, ascites production has a number of innate drawbacks. Simply performing the process as intended carries a high risk of biological contamination. That’s to say nothing of the obvious concerns related to animal welfare which had, by that time, reached a much broader public consciousness than ever before. Our industry was primed to explore new methods with an eye to both addressing ethical concerns and resolving technical hurdles.
So, when one of our vendors approached us with what they described as a cost-effective alternative to ascites that could yield equal or better antibody productions, our interest was quickly piqued. What could be better than identifying a method for mAb production that overcame both logistical and ethical issues associated with ascites? The answer would come in the form of the WHEATON® CELLine™ Bioreactor flask (we tend to use the company’s 1000mL, also known as the “WCL1000”).
Our early advocacy for alternatives to mouse ascites in therapeutic antibody discovery included this take on James Montgomery Flagg’s famous World War I recruitment poster. We created magnets with this design to distribute at industry conferences, encouraging recipients to share new options with their labs.
In collaboration with Wilson Wolf, the WCL1000 bioreactor's manufacturer at that time, we established an internal R&D program to evaluate this device which, at the time, was still in development. Using our own catalog antibodies, we evaluated the performance of these bioreactor flasks using our regular antibody production protocols. The feedback we provided to Wilson Wolf was used to refine the product’s construction and, ultimately, to validate its effectiveness. When adopting the finished WCL1000 and incorporating it into our discovery services, we found that clients were happy to have an agile and affordable way to produce mAbs from hybridoma, one that simultaneously addressed critical animal welfare issues.
From that point, the WCL1000 became an integral feature of our services. But the story didn't end there. In the midst of a global crisis decades later, we would partner with the WCL1000's manufacturer once more.
Fast forward nearly a quarter century: As the COVID-19 pandemic upends daily life for everyone on the planet, essential service providers work to continue operations as best they can. Supply chain disruptions hit manufacturing and distribution centers alike, and DWK Life Sciences – now the current manufacturer of the WHEATON® CELLine™-1000 bioreactor flask – was one of many companies affected. Suddenly, components critical to the construction of the WCL1000 became much harder to obtain. The challenge then was maintaining the quality standards that the flask had already achieved. Seizing this unforeseen hurdle as an opportunity, DWK went into action to not only secure its product line, but also to see what opportunities there might be for improvement.
Economy of space is just one of many benefits afforded by the WCL-1000. In this image from Antibody Solutions’ archives, WCL1000 bioreactors can be seen stacked neatly in one of our incubators.
Given our extensive experience with the WCL1000 bioreactor flask, DWK provided us with a number of flasks with different membrane samples to help understand if there was an opportunity to improve the product and ensure performance remained as good or if not better than predecessors. Our research team used these prototypes as part of an internal R&D effort to assess and validate the latest generation of antibody production technology. Working closely with DWK, our team set about evaluating the performance of these new bioreactors, just as we had more than twenty years earlier. Using our feedback, DWK was able to verify that their alternative membrane supply in the WHEATON® CELLine™ flasks performed at least as well or better than the previous generations (and even better than many alternative production methods).
Then and now, our relationship with the WCL1000's evolution is emblematic of how we do business across the board. Cellestive, our multi-pathway discovery platform, is specifically designed to allow our customers to select the best possible discovery pathways for their unique project. To ensure that those favored discovery pathways will yield the best results, we make every effort to ensure that all pathway elements – from the operators and protocols all the way down to the equipment and its components – are best suited to the task. Collaborating on the WCL1000 bioreactor flask gave us a uniquely active role in ensuring the best possible antibody production services for our clients.
The WCL1000 is one of several products that we've watched democratize the discovery process by giving companies of any size access to innovations that might otherwise be out of reach. As early adopters, it's become an especially valuable component in Antibody Solutions' suite of discovery services. We are proud to have had the privilege of working with DWK Life Sciences' team (and Wilson Wolf before them) to advance development of tools that so many research terms rely on day in, day out.
I've always felt that our ongoing success goes beyond just doing good work for our clients. Working side-by-side with our vendors and remaining alert to opportunities to expand and improve our services has kept Antibody Solutions at the forefront of its constantly evolving field. I believe that collaborations such as the WCL1000 research project have greatly benefited our clients and the antibody discovery field as a whole. What's more, we want to put it to work for you. Drop us a line if you'd like to know about our services and to experience firsthand why, after 30 years, we are still a leader in therapeutic antibody discovery.