Hematech's goal is to produce human antibodies in cattle. Normally human antibodies are found in human blood to help fight infection. They continuously survey the body looking for foreign invaders and eliminate them.
Polyclonal antibodies bind to foreign invaders
and eliminate them from the body.
Why Cattle?
There are two approaches to making therapeutic antibodies. The first and most common are to produce a collection of identical (monoclonal) antibodies. Hematech's technology is unique in that it is designed to produce a collection of many different types of antibodies (polyclonal). Polyclonal antibodies can only be produced in an animal and, until now, human polyclonal antibodies could only be produced in humans. Hematech has developed a method for producing human antibodies in cattle. We choose to make antibodies in cattle for a number of reasons:
Cattle are large animals and make large volumes of antibodies (mature cattle have about 2.5 pounds of antibodies in their blood).
Cattle are easy to work with, are readily available and, because they are important in agriculture, we know a lot about how they fight disease.
The technology required to put human antibody genes in and inactivate the endogenous antibody genes is more advanced in cattle than in any other species.
How we derive the antibody drug product from the cattle is an interesting and innovative process. Follow the links below to learn about the process step by step:
