Meridian Life Science has revealed its portfolio of animal immunoglobulins, and highlighted its chicken antibodies.
The company said its chicken antibodies have various advantages in testing environments.
It said that because chickens are not mammals, they are more likely to produce high affinity antibodies to mammalian antigens.
In producing the antibodies, immunisation is done to the hen but the antibodies are collected from the eggs.
It is not necessary to bleed the chickens.
Meridian Life Science said the bulk production capabilities are a further advantage.
A single hen can lay enough eggs to produce up to 3g of IgY per month, which is 10-20 times the amount of a rabbit.
The Fc region of a chicken IgY is different from mammalian IgG, reducing background by not binding to mammalian rheumatoid factors or human anti-mouse antibodies.
Compared to rabbit or goat, it is less expensive to produce chicken antibodies in bulk.
The company said that chicken antibodies do not bind to Staphylococcus protein A, and so are used as the primary antibody for its Elisa kit for protein A detection.
