Secondary Antibodies Optimised for Immunohistochemistry

Specificity and high affinity are of primary importance when selecting antibodies used in immunohistochemistry and other standard laboratory techniques.  The use of unlabelled primary antibodies and subsequently labelled secondary antibodies is a commonly accepted standard procedure.

Stratech Scientific supply the expanding Jackson ImmunoResearch range of secondary antibodies, which hold an excellent reputation among researchers, built on the high purity, specificity and reliability of their 4,000+ strong product range.  Key to this success is extensive testing and cross-adsorbtion to demonstrate minimal cross-reactivity and low background in many applications. These antibodies are available unconjugated, or conjugated to a range of different fluorophores and enzymes as standard.  This allows the flexibility to change detection systems with minimal alteration to ones protocol, a factor that reduces time and errors involved with redevelopment of experimental protocols.

Immunohistochemical techniques often call for the detection of multiple antigens in a single experiment.  In such a situation secondary antibodies are commonly used, the properties of these making the difference between accurate and inaccurate detection of the key antigens. For such protocols, Jackson ImmunoResearch antibodies have an advantage.  Providing minimal cross reactivity to other secondary and primary antibodies, as well as endogenous sample proteins and immunoglobulins, cross-labelling and background is minimised.

In situations where primary antibodies raised in the same host species need to be used to label different antigens they offer a solution using monovalent Fab fragments.  These can be used to ‘change the species’ of one of the primary antibodies, again providing an easy to use tool that allows the use of standard protocol procedures etc.

Further ongoing work with the use of new fluorophores conjugated to secondary antibodies is improving the visibility and stability of the detection systems as well as expanding the ranges of excitation and emission that can be used for detection.

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