State-of-the-art Monoclonal Antibody Facility to be Built in Australia

A European - Australian collaboration will result in the largest facility for monoclonal antibody production in the Southern hemisphere.

Tecan (Männedorf, Switzerland), a manufacturer of advanced automation and detection systems will be joining forces with the Monash Antibody Technologies Facility (MATF) of Monash University (Australia) to build a state-of-the-art monoclonal antibody production facility.

The antibody factory will be located at the MATF. It will be based around multiple, integrated liquid handling workstations, and all the stages of the production process will be fully automated.

The new facility will allow MATF to increase its production capacity from about 500 panels of novel antibodies a year to more than 5,000. This will help to alleviate shortages in the supply of new antibodies experienced by many researchers working on protein function and physiological processes.

Alan Sawyer, director of MATF, said, Probably the main bottleneck in biomedical sciences right now is a lack of affinity reagents like antibodies. We wanted to remove that bottleneck and open up new ways for investigators and pharmaceutical companies to think about doing science. This is a colossal step towards accomplishing that.

Carl Severinghaus, senior vice-president at Tecan, said, We are delighted to be co-developing this exciting new system with the MATF and look forward to working together on this as well as any future endeavors.


Related Links:
Tecan
Monash University