Validation of Antibody Specificity Using Knockdown Techniques

It is often assumed that antibodies sold by established commercial suppliers are specific to the protein of interest. However, most commercial research antibodies have not been tested for specificity, which can waste time, money, and potentially produce unsubstantiated results. To ensure that our antibodies are specific, we validated most of our antibodies by means of lentiviral shRNA-mediated gene silencing (knockdown) techniques. For SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, we validated them with real coronaviruses and real human specimens.