Custom Chicken IgY Antibody Production

Creative Biolabs provides the most cost-effective custom chicken IgY antibody production services in the industry. Chicken IgY antibodies are avian equivalents of mammalian IgG antibodies. Chicken antibodies are produced by immunization of laying hens and subsequently purification of IgY from the egg yolk. As described more than 100 years ago, avian maternal antibodies are transferred from serum to egg yolk to confer passive immunity to embryos and neonates. The IgY concentration in the yolk is slightly higher than the IgY concentration in the chicken serum. Typically, each egg contains about 50-100mg of total IgY [comparable to IgG in 10ml rabbit serum], and the antigen-specific antibody is about 1-10% of the total.

Our staff scientists have in the past 5 years produced IgY antibodies targeting over 1500 antigens, the largest number for a single company in the world. Our standard polyclonal IgY production service involves two chickens and 16 eggs. Our proprietary IgY purification system allows production of ultra-pure total IgY at low cost. We also conduct antigen affinity purification using purified total IgY to isolate the antigen-specific antibodies for immuno-labeling or other purposes. Our antigen affinity purification protocol employs affinity chromatography, ion exchange and gel filtration columns. We are also able to produce monoclonal ScFV or Fab types of IgY antibody using phage display based techniques. Furthermore, we are able to produce humanized IgY by transferring the ScFV regions of the IgY monoclonal antibodies into a human IgG expression vector and manufacture the chimeric antibody in CHO cells.

Advantages of Chicken IgY Antibodies
          • Higher avidity: most mammalian proteins exhibit enhanced immunogenicity in chickens than in mammals due to phylogenetic
            distance, and thus raise antibodies of higher avidity; this also makes production of antibodies against conserved mammalian 
            proteins more successful in chicken than in mammals.
          • Higher specificity: compared with mammalian IgG, chicken IgY has less cross reactivity with mammalian proteins other than 
            the immunogen;
          • Lower background: IgY and IgG are structurally different in the Fc region; IgY does not bind to IgG Fc receptors and causes 
            less false positive staining.
          • High yield: very low quantities of antigen are required to obtain high and long-lasting IgY titer in the egg yolk; chickens lay 
            eggs regularly, providing a continual source of IgY antibody.