Dr Jeff Monette is Head of Immunoassay Platform Development at Abcam. He completed his PhD from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University before undertaking postdoctoral research at the University of Washington and transitioning to industry.

What initially drew you to a career in science, and what led you to research coronary artery disease?

I have always been interested in science, improving human health, and fighting disease. So, a career spent building tools to help scientists determine and treat disease states felt like a natural fit for me. For most of my academic career I studied mechanisms of aging in the heart and cardiovascular system. My focus was always in making novel quantitative assays for the mechanisms I was studying. I spent many years doing small molecule quantitative mass spectrometry and then moved on to developing quantitative methods for measuring lipoprotein constituents.

Tell me about your research experience before Abcam.

Before working at Abcam, I worked for Thermo Fisher Scientific as a scientist in the Discovery Biology Group located in Eugene, Oregon, which was the home of Molecular Probes before they were acquired. There were a few main lines of research going on at this site: developing the Attune NXT flow cytometer, developing novel cellular assays and consumables, and, of course, novel fluorescent dye synthesis. While there, I worked alongside one of the original founders of Mito Sciences, Robert Aggeler. Robert was my unofficial mentor and I soaked in everything I could about the basic science and chemistry of bioconjugation.

What drew you to work with immunoassays?

The part about science that I enjoy the most is inventing. I spent a good amount of time in academia, constantly writing grants. I love the focus on specific problems and elucidating mechanisms of biology and disease. However, I find making tools and developing assays far more rewarding. As I mentioned earlier, developing quantitative tools was right in my wheelhouse, so my first position at Abcam as a SimpleStep ELISA® team lead was a perfect fit.

What do you do at Abcam?

The mission of the platform innovation group is to investigate novel technologies in the field of immunoassays and bring them to market. We develop internal and external tech scoping projects to improve the deployment of our CaptSure technology, focusing on key customer needs like expanded target breadth, reduction in hands-on time, workflow improvements, increased sensitivity, and accessibility to high-throughput automation.

So far, we’ve released three new ELISA platforms:

1. We developed and released novel chemical approaches to allow absolute quantification in post-translational modifications of specific proteins using ELISA.

2. We released a first-to-market 384-well ELISA kit that reduces sample requirements four-fold and is automation-friendly.

3. Our new competitive ELISA platform, which allows for highly reproducible manufacturing and lot-to-lot consistency, has just been given the green light and is being populated by products.

Four main aspects of our ELISA kits allow us to deliver results to our customers that they couldn’t otherwise obtain.

Our antibody pipeline is second to none; the teams across the globe consistently design and put out excellent and highly specific antibodies, and, for ELISA, ours are purpose-built for the platform, as opposed to catalog screening antibodies that were made for, say, western blotting or IHC. Second, the CaptSure technology allows us to use the same plate across the whole platform, which makes manufacturing extremely robust compared to individual antibody coating done in classic ELISA. Third, our NPD process has proven effective in turning out high-quality kits our customers know they can rely on. And finally, our manufacturing, logistics, and customer support make sure they get functional kits fast and have all the scientific support to be successful in their experiments the first time they run them. It is really easy to stay excited working on a product line that I am proud of, and when I go to conferences and talk to my fellow scientists, all I hear is that they love them and want more!

What advice would you give to young scientists starting out in their careers now? How do you think research and the field of life science has changed since you started your career?

An odd but true bit of advice I was given when starting my journey was to worry less about which specific field/lab/specialty of science you go into, as there are so many interesting questions to answer that can really excite and fulfill you. It’s more important to enjoy your work and the people around you. The people at Abcam and the Eugene site have created such a wonderful environment for science. I love my job, but it is very far from what I thought I would be doing when starting my PhD work. We do still have some mitochondrial and metabolism targets that come through SimpleStep ELISA®, but the bulk of my work is in assay design and process improvement.

The largest change in life science research since I began is definitely AI and other forms of in silico research. Primary to tertiary structure protein prediction was just a dream when I began. Now, companies like Monod are using predictive computational programs to design novel binders, improve binding parameters, and make drug candidates completely in silico. These types of technology will revolutionize our approach to biological research.

Can you share a memorable moment, learning or breakthrough from your career that significantly impacted you?

My most fond moment at Abcam so far was the very time I ran a “FrankenProtein”. When I first joined Abcam as a developer, I was given a protein target by a fellow team lead. The target was Human Src pY416, which is a protein with very specific phosphorylation, and we had no way of making a quantitative kit for it as there was no standard available. Being new, I tried as hard as I could to figure out a way to make it work, only to have to slink over to my new boss and admit I was a failure. He quickly informed me that no, we cannot make that, and that it was a hazing prank by my new comrade. To pay him back, I used my knowledge of bioconjugation and protein chemistry to come up with a semi-synthetic route to make a usable quantitative standard. I bought the materials, and Adam Goering from the conjugations group ran the synthesis. He delivered the material, and I went into the lab and ran the assay, fully expecting it to be horrible. I still remember developing that plate to this day. Blue, beautiful blue, titrating down the plate. It looked absolutely perfect. We put out the first post-translational modification kit, and now the NPD team is putting out stunners like the Tau pT217 kit and p53 pS15 kits.