PRIYANKA CHAKRABORTY, AMITY UNIVERSITY KOLKATA
Hybridoma Technology is known for its’ large-scale production of identical antibodies. Recently, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) urged the government to allow the development of animal-free antibodies for the production of vaccine development. This came after the work done by the Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC) and claims were made that animal-free antibodies are perfectly capable of replacing animal-derived ones in all monoclonal antibodies. But certain concerns are being raised against this announcement. While it is important to replace animal-derived antibodies with other alternatives proper scientific validations are still lacking.
The most crucial concern with substituting hybridoma technology with animal-free ones is insufficient knowledge. Also, inconsistency in results, the requirement of animal immunization and no universal display technologies are some of the logical drawbacks. Hybridoma technology provides more specificity and antibodies are generated in context with immune response. While developing a vaccine, this technology provides significant information on immunization against an antigen. On the other hand, display technologies need to improve quality and substantiate their experiments which require more time and resources.
Hybridoma Technology uses animal-derived antibodies only in the immunization phase. Other phrases like cellular fusion and clonal selection are essentially animal-free. Large quantities of monoclonal antibodies are already animal-free and more are being genetically modified to produce antibodies for therapeutic use, keeping the animal welfare in mind.
Display technologies are very useful in some phases but processes like therapeutic antibody development and analytical processes do not come under it yet. The ESAC is already aware of these limitations and is rigorously working towards training their staff, implementing new technologies and improving affinity and specificity. But, unfortunately, display methods are not a practical alternative for hybridoma technology yet.
The need of the hour is to apply animal-free antibody method wherever it has scientifically proved to be useful while constructing a road map for areas in which it has not been successful yet. Only then society as a whole will truly benefit from animal-free vaccine development.
Also read: COVID-19 or flu? Which one to control first?
Source: González-Fernández, Á., Bermúdez Silva, F.J., López-Hoyos, M. et al. Non-animal-derived monoclonal antibodies are not ready to substitute current hybridoma technology. Nat Methods (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-020-00977-5
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