Aves Labs, Inc.

There are several distinct advantages for using chickens over rabbits to produce your polyclonal antibodies.

1. Chickens are more likely to produce higher titre antibodies against mammalian antigens (especially against highly conserved mammalian proteins).

2. It is a more humane way to produce antibodies, since we simply collect eggs, instead of having to bleed rabbits (including by cardiac puncture).

3. Chicken IgY’s can be used together with mouse and rabbit antibodies in double immunostaining applications.

4. A hen can produce up to 3 grams of IgY per month, which is at least 10 times the amount that can be obtained from a rabbit.

5. Chicken IgY’s are considerably less expensive to produce than rabbit IgG’s. The costs of producing purified preparations of chicken IgY’s are about HALF that of rabbit IgG’s due to savings incurred from less technician time collecting the raw material (i.e., eggs versus serum) and less technician time purifying the antibodies (i.e., no chromatography steps with chicken IgY’s).

6. There is no “Fc domain” within the stem portion of a chicken IgY. This provides several advantages over rabbit IgG’s:

• It reduces the likelihood of having false positives in diagnostic applications, since it is the mammalian Fc domain that binds “rheumatoid factors” or other naturally occurring anti-Fc antibodies.
• Does not activate mammalian complement systems, allowing the use of chicken IgY’s in in vivo applications.
• Does not bind to mammalian Fc receptors, avoiding non-specific binding to cells expressing such receptors (e.g., macrophages and dendritic cells).

7. By avoiding the need to “bleed out” the host animal, a nearly indefinite supply of antibody is assurred. Antibodies purified from subsequent batches of eggs are likely to produce antibody preparations with similar specificities and properties.

8. IgY contains a larger glycosylation index, allowing labeling with more HRP, biotin or fluorochrome tags per IgY, producing higher signals.