We are proud to announce the DHT's latest funded research project which uses the exciting technology of quantum dots coupled with nABPs to help replace the reliance on animals for antibody generation.

Antibodies are commonly used in medical research to detect target molecules in patient samples and are generated by injecting a specific target antigen into animal hosts such as mice, rats, rabbits, goats, sheep, chickens or horses. To harvest antibodies the animal host is either repeatedly bled or sacrificed.  Antibody production is a major business, involving tens of millions of animals. Hence, development of effective, reliable non-animal alternatives to antibodies will greatly reduce the reliance of animals in scientific research and specifically clinical cancer diagnosis.

The Dr Hadwen Trust is pleased to announce that the latest project to be funded aims to develop new, sensitive and animal-free cancer imaging probe as an effective replacement for antibody based approaches. This probe will be built upon two powerful technologies: non-antibody binding proteins (nABPs) and quantum dots (QDs). nABPs can mimic antibody-target binding properties and QDs are tiny inorganic crystals that have very bright and stable fluorescence which can be used to detect target molecules in patient samples.

This three-year DHT-funded project will be carried out by close collaboration of three independent research groups at the University of Leeds led by Dr Dejian Zhou, Darren Tomlinson and Professor Philip Quirke.  Researchers aim to characterise and optimise techniques to detect specific cancer marker proteins without the use of animals.