Five Pillars of Antibody Validation

GeneTex understands the absolute necessity for reliable antibodies to achieve accurate and reproducible experimental results. To optimize the performance of our reagents, we employ various analytic validation strategies to ensure both consistent quality (see GeneTex’s Approach to Antibody Lot-to-Lot Variability) and specificity. These modalities are in line with guidelines described by the International Working Group on Antibody Validation (IWGAV) and have become fundamental components of our quality assurance process:

Knockout / Knockdown Complete or significant reduction of signal following genome editing or RNA interference of target protein.

Comparable antibodies Correlation between two antibodies against the same target with different epitopes across several samples, preferentially with different expression levels of the target protein.

IP/MS Analysis Mass spec analysis of target protein peptide sequences from samples immunoprecipitated by antibody from lysates.

Biological and orthogonal characteristics Change of antibody signal in accordance with defined biological characteristics of target protein following specific sample preparation parameters, including drug treatments, hypoxia conditions, or subcellular fractionation. Also, analysis of signals from various cell lines that either do or do not express the target in the context of protein or mRNA levels.

Protein Overexpression To confirm the endogenous signals detected by the antibody are the target protein, transfected cells with cDNA encoding the target protein are used as a positive control and independently validated by western blot.

Product datasheets display the corresponding certification icon(s) to identify those antibodies that have satisfied one or more of these validation methods.