- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- Advanced Technology and Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Blood Cells and Blood Cancer
- Clinical Translation
- Epigenetics and Development
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence
- Inflammation
- Personalised Oncology
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Ubiquitin Signalling
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Collaborators
- Suppliers
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Cancer
- Development and ageing
- Immune health and infection
- Research fields
- Research technologies
- Research centres
- People
- Alistair Brown
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Assoc Prof Joanna Groom
- Associate Profesor Ian Majewski
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Diana Hansen
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Associate Professor Gemma Kelly
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Vince
- Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor John Wentworth
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Kate Sutherland
- Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Melissa Call
- Associate Professor Melissa Davis
- Associate Professor Misty Jenkins
- Associate Professor Nawaf Yassi
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Peter Czabotar
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Rhys Allan
- Associate Professor Rosie Watson
- Associate Professor Ruth Kluck
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Tracy Putoczki
- Chela Niall
- Deborah Carr
- Dr Alisa Glukhova
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Belinda Phipson
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bernhard Lechtenberg
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hamish King
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr Jim Whittle
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Nadia Davidson
- Dr Nadia Kershaw
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Rebecca Feltham
- Dr Rory Bowden
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Sarah Best
- Dr Saskia Freytag
- Dr Shabih Shakeel
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Stephin Vervoort
- Dr Yunshun Chen
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Joh Kirby
- Kaye Wycherley
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Mark Eaton
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Anne Voss
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Komander
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor James McCarthy
- Professor James Murphy
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leanne Robinson
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Marco Herold
- Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Mike Lawrence
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Diseases
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Clinician-scientist training
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- A new regulator of 'stemness' to create dendritic cell factories for immunotherapy
- Advanced imaging interrogation of pathogen induced NETosis
- Cancer driver deserts
- Cryo-electron microscopy of Wnt signalling complexes
- Deciphering the heterogeneity of breast cancer at the epigenetic and genetic levels
- Developing drugs to block malaria transmission
- Developing new computational tools for CRISPR genomics to advance cancer research
- Developing novel antibody-based methods for regulating apoptotic cell death
- Discovering novel paradigms to cure viral and bacterial infections
- Discovery and targeting of novel regulators of transcription
- Dissecting host cell invasion by the diarrhoeal pathogen Cryptosporidium
- Do membrane forces govern assembly of the deadly apoptotic pore?
- Doublecortin-like kinases, drug targets in cancer and neurological disorders
- E3 ubiquitin ligases in neurodegeneration, autoinflammation and cancer
- Engineering improved CAR-T cell therapies
- Epigenetic biomarkers of tuberculosis infection
- Exploiting cell death pathways in regulatory T cells for cancer immunotherapy
- Finding treatments for chromatin disorders of intellectual disability
- Functional epigenomics in human B cells
- Genomic rearrangement detection with third generation sequencing technology
- How does DNA damage shape disease susceptibility over a lifetime?
- How does DNA hypermutation shape the development of solid tumours?
- How platelets prevent neonatal stroke
- Human lung protective immunity to tuberculosis
- Interaction with Toxoplasma parasites and the brain
- Interactions between tumour cells and their microenvironment in non-small cell lung cancer
- Investigating the role of dysregulated Tom40 in neurodegeneration
- Investigating the role of mutant p53 in cancer
- Lupus: proteasome inhibitors and inflammation
- Machine learning methods for somatic genome rearrangement detection
- Malaria: going bananas for sex
- Measurements of malaria parasite and erythrocyte membrane interactions using cutting-edge microscopy
- Measuring susceptibility of cancer cells to BH3-mimetics
- Minimising rheumatic adverse events of checkpoint inhibitor cancer therapy
- Mutational signatures of structural variation
- Naturally acquired immune response to malaria parasites
- Predicting the effect of non-coding structural variants in cancer
- Revealing the epigenetic origins of immune disease
- Reversing antimalarial resistance in human malaria parasites
- Structural and functional analysis of DNA repair complexes
- Targeting human infective coronaviruses using alpaca antibodies
- Towards targeting altered glial biology in high-grade brain cancers
- Uncovering the real impact of persistent malaria infections
- Understanding Plasmodium falciparum invasion of red blood cells
- Understanding how malaria parasites sabotage acquisition of immunity
- Understanding malaria infection dynamics
- Understanding the mechanism of type I cytokine receptor activation
- Unveiling the heterogeneity of small cell lung cancer
- Using alpaca antibodies to understand malaria invasion and transmission
- Using combination immunotherapy to tackle heterogeneous brain tumours
- Using intravital microscopy for immunotherapy against brain tumours
- Using nanobodies to cross the blood brain barrier for drug delivery
- Using structural biology to understand programmed cell death
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Abebe Fola
- Andrew Baldi
- Anna Gabrielyan
- Bridget Dorizzi
- Casey Ah-Cann
- Catia Pierotti
- Emma Nolan
- Huon Wong
- Jing Deng
- Joy Liu
- Kaiseal Sarson-Lawrence
- Komal Patel
- Lilly Backshell
- Megan Kent
- Naomi Jones
- Rebecca Delconte
- Roberto Bonelli
- Rune Larsen
- Runyu Mao
- Sarah Garner
- Simona Seizova
- Wayne Cawthorne
- Wil Lehmann
- Miles Horton
- Alexandra Gurzau
- Student achievements
- Student association
- Learning Hub
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
Antibody technologies

Antibodies are naturally occurring proteins produced by immune cells in response to invading microbes such as viruses. Antibodies bind to foreign proteins, and can be highly specific for a small part of that protein (the antigen).
Antibodies play a crucial role in our immune system’s ability to recognise and fight infections.
The specificity of antibodies makes them an invaluable tool for medical research. Medical researchers use antibodies to help answer fundamental biological questions, for example understanding how specific proteins behave, and to assist in developing new therapies. Antibody-based drugs are in clinical use for diseases including cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.
WEHI has a dedicated Antibody Facility for developing and producing antibody products and supporting antibody-based research. This access to bespoke antibody services enables researchers to advance their projects more rapidly, while expertise from the facility’s experienced team assists in optimising experimental design.
Antibody-based research at WEHI
Our researchers utilise antibodies in several ways, including:
- To develop antibody-based therapeutics
- To detect the presence, absence or amount of a specific protein in a sample
- To identify where a protein is located in a cell and how it behaves
- To understand how proteins interact
- To gain insights that aid drug discovery and development
- Using single cell and proteomics technologies to produce fully human antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies underpin some of the most commonly used therapeutics for cancer, immune disorders and inflammatory conditions. Monoclonal antibodies can be generated to bind to one specific part of a protein, making them powerful tools for diagnostics and biomedical research.
For researchers with a particular protein of interest, antibodies can be developed that enable the researcher to study the protein in vivo, in vitro, on cell surfaces or within cells. Being able to detect the presence – or amount – of a protein of interest can assist the development of diagnostic tests for certain diseases.
Nanobodies
Nanobodies are laboratory-made antibody fragments from camelids or cartilaginous fish that consist of a single heavy chain variable domain. Nanobodies are of interest as both therapeutics and research tools due to their small size, high antigen-binding affinity and their increased stability across temperature and pH range.
To generate nanobodies, our researchers immunise alpacas with a target protein. Nanobody genes from isolated plasma cells of the immunised alpaca are then cloned to produce a nanobody library. Using this library, researchers perform rounds of screening to obtain target-specific nanobodies. The resulting nanobodies are expressed in bacterial systems.
To inquire about nanobody research platforms please contact Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham.
Antibody services for researchers
The WEHI Antibody Facility provides antibody services to academic researchers and commercial clients.
Established in 1991 the facility is staffed by an experienced and multidisciplinary team who work collaboratively with researchers, providing expert advice and versatility in experimental design. The team can develop monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to novel targets, and adapt and refine protocols to suit researcher requirements.
Core services include:
- Monoclonal and polyclonal antibody production
- ELISA assays for quantification of antibody titre
- Cloning hybridomas by limiting dilution
- Purification of monoclonal antibodies from hybridoma supernatant
- IgG Purification from sera
- Screening of fusion supernatant by ELISA
- Screening of antibodies using western blots
- Provision of fusion supernatant to researchers for screening by immunofluorescence and FACS analysis
- Isotyping of monoclonal antibody supernatants
- Adaption of cell lines to media suitable for growing in bioreactors
- In vitro production of monoclonal antibodies using bioreactor technology
- Monoclonal antibody purification from many, varied bioreactor supernatants
- Conjugation of monoclonal antibodies (FITC, Pacific Blue, APC, HRP, Biotin, Alexafluors)
- Antibody production: 1-10 mg, 10-50 mg, 50-500 mg
- Thawing, culturing and preparing cell freezings for shipping or long-term storage
- Mycoplasma testing of cell lines
- Endotoxin testing of cell lines
- Treatment of cell lines contaminated with endotoxin
- Analysing antibodies using Octet
An extensive repository of purified antibodies is available and can be conjugated to meet specific researcher requirements.
To inquire about services and prices, please contact:
Kaye Wycherley, Head, Antibody Services
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Biotechnology Centre
4 Research Ave, LaTrobe University, Bundoora 3086
P +61 3 9345 2286
F +61 3 9345 2211
E wycherley.k@wehi.edu.au
Researchers:
Super Content:
Our researchers are working towards better approaches to diagnose, treat and prevent the spread of coronaviruses, both to address the current COVID-19 global outbreak as well as in preparedness for likely future coronaviral disease outbreaks.
WEHI researchers are studying ‘nanobodies’ – tiny immune proteins made by alpacas – in a bid to understand whether they might be effective in blocking SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The NDDC enables medical researchers to access ultra-high throughput screening, fast tracking scientific discoveries into new medicines.
Optical microscopy has become one of the most powerful tools in medical research.
WEHI's Centre for Dynamic Imaging is advancing our understanding of how diseases develop, spread and respond to treatment.