Validating antibodies with knock-out technologies webinar

​​​​How can knock-out validation support the reproducibility of your experiments?

​Overview

• Watch Dr. Alejandra Solache discussing knock-out validation of our antibodies
• Why use knock-out validation?
• Abcam’s knock-out validation initiative
• About Dr. Alejandra Solache
• References

​​Dr. Alejandra Solache, Vice President of New Product Development at Abcam, recently discussed how we validate our antibodies using knock-out (KO) technologies. Learn about the value of gene knock-out technologies in large-scale antibody screening by watching the video below.     

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​You can see Dr. Alejandra Solache present more on antibody KO validation in this webinar from 21:03, which was a part of the “Antibody validation webinar series” hosted by the Antibody Society. For more webinars on Antibody Validation from experts in the field, you can also check out the Antibody Society's learning center.

Why use knock-out validation

Several studies have demonstrated the irreproducibility of life sciences reagents, which in the case of antibodies, frequently results from a lack of specificity to their targets of interest. This lack of specificity, related to issues such as cross-reactivity and off-target protein binding, has contributed to the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’^1,2.

KO validation is one of the most accepted and trusted validation processes for antibody specificity^3,4. This robust technique can confirm the specificity of an antibody by testing it in a KO cell line, cell lysate, or tissue that does not express the target protein. A specific antibody should, therefore, produce no signal in the KO cell line but give a specific signal in the wild type sample. In this way, KO validation serves as a true negative control⁵.

Find out more about knock-out validation

Abcam’s knock-out validation initiative

To ensure that our antibodies are specific and provide reproducible results, we apply KO validation at a large scale. We validate our antibodies in multiple applications, including flow cytometry, western blot, and immunocytochemistry, using multiple antibodies per target. Antibodies that demonstrate specificity are given a special “KO validated” designation, whereas those exhibiting off-target binding are removed from our catalog. We have now confirmed the specificity of more than 2500 antibodies with KO validation for over 2000 protein targets.