Polyclonal Antibody Advantages

• Less expensive to produce
• Short turnaround time
• Requires about 1mg of antigen
• Multiple host species available

Monoclonal Antibody Advantages

• Unlimited quantity and availability - the antibodies are secreted by an immortal cell line.
• Lot-to-lot consistency - the same antibody is produced each time.
• Specificity

Polyclonal Antibody Disadvantages

• Limited availability - once the batch of serum is used, there is no more.
• Difficult to reproduce - each host produces antibodies that characterize differently, which makes it difficult to reproduce a polyclonal antibody.
• Lot-to-lot variation - each animal makes slightly different antibodies and even each bleed from the same animal does not contain identical antibodies as the previous bleed.

Monoclonal Antibody Disadvantages

• Expensive to develop - because of the extensive amount of cell culture work needed to isolate stable clones, the pricing is much higher than a polyclonal.
• 4-6 months development time to produce stable clones
• Requires 5+ mg of antigen - for immunization and screening.

Rabbit

• Most common host species
• Great host for peptide and most protein antigens
• Not ideal for highly conserved mammalian antigens

Chicken

• Non-mammalian host species
• Ideal for conserved mammalian protein antigens
• Non-invasive (antibodies obtained from egg yolks)
• Not ideal for peptide antigens

Goat

• Large serum volumes (250ml vs. 25ml for a rabbit)
• Long life-span
• Not ideal for modified peptide antigens
• Titers not as high as rabbit hosts