The COBRE Nanbodies Project

We are now offering a single domain antibody (Nanobody®) production service. Nanobodies, in contrast to conventional antibodies which are made up of two heavy and two light chains with a molecular weight of ~150,000, are composed of only heavy chains. The heavy chain nanobody domains can be isolated as a small 15,000 Da single domain antibody, which retains the high affinity of conventional antibodies. Due to their small size nanobodies can be expressed in E. coli and their cDNAs manipulated in a variety of ways. Nanobodies are more heat stable than conventional antibodies and are stable over a wide pH range. These and other properties have made nanobodies increasingly popular as reagents for research, for use as therapeutics, and as reagents for diagnostics. 

Through resources provided by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the University of Kentucky’s COBRE Protein Core is now producing these single domain antibodies in alpacas for investigators as part of their fee for service structure.

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