Abcam Launches New Anti-PD-L1 Antibody

Abcam plc has announced the launch of its anti-PD-L1 primary antibody (clone 28-8). Produced using Abcam’s RabMAb® recombinant monoclonal antibody technology, the clone offers highly specific and reproducible antigen recognition to a checkpoint inhibitor critical to current cancer immunology research.

Programmed-death ligand 1 (PD-L1), also known as CD274 and B7-H1, can be expressed on the surface of tumour cells and binds to PD-1 receptors found on T-cells. This mechanism is used by tumour cells to evade detection and removal by the immune system.

Abcam’s highly specific anti-PD-L1 clone (clone 28-8) has been knockout validated and tested in key applications such as Immunohistochemistry (IHC)1 and Flow Cytometry providing researchers with trusted data and ensuring the accuracy of their results.

Developed through a research collaboration with a major pharma company, the PD-L1 antibody will give researchers a high quality tool to further explore the role of PD-L1 in disease progression and treatment. An IHC assay using clone 28-8 has been used to determine PD-L1 expression in clinical trials. Aside from cancer immunology, PD-L1 has also been implicated as having a role in autoimmune diseases and neurological disease.

Abcam is planning further industry partnerships, applying its RabMAb primary antibody technology to make emerging biomarkers available for major disease areas for both research and diagnostic purposes, including other checkpoint inhibitors. RabMAb primary antibodies offer researchers the sensitivity of the rabbit immune system combined with the specificity and consistency of monoclonal antibodies.

Alan Hirzel, CEO of Abcam, said “We want to make specialized, validated reagents, with a translational focus, available for basic research. Collaborating with leading pharmaceutical companies to develop antibodies to critical biomarkers is one important part of this strategy.”

“Our industry partners are working in disease areas with high unmet need, so we are ideally placed to combine their specialist understanding with our novel RabMAb technology to make clones accessible to researchers. In fact, our anti-PD-L1 antibody is highly cited in the market particularly for immunohistochemistry.”