Abcam knockout-validated antibodies

With the increasing need for highly specific antibodies, Abcam has introduced KO validation as a standard quality control protocol for antibodies at scale.

Affinity binders/antibodies are amongst the most commonly used tools in life science to study proteins and their functions within various biological pathways and diseases. With their specificity and sensitivity, these tools can help to easily identify the protein of interest at various expression levels. However, not all of these tools are specific, leading to a growing issue of experimental irreproducibility.

One of the most accepted and trusted validation processes for antibody specificity is knockout validation, in which antibody specificity is confirmed by testing the antibody of interest on a knockout sample or cell line which doesn’t express the target protein. In a knockout cell line, the antibody target is not present as the gene encoding the protein of interest is eliminated or ‘knocked out’. This data is compared against a normal cell line (or wild type) and, if the antibody is truly specific, the antibody should have no detection in the knockout cell line, but instead a specific signal in the normal cell line.

​Abcam has incorporated knockout-based validation as a standard level of validation for its antibody products. The company is starting at 500 protein targets a year and will knock out validated products to these targets as part of its rigorous antibody validation process. The knockout-validated seal shows that the antibody has not only been validated in the recommended applications and species, but its specificity has been confirmed.