The grouping of monoclonal antibodies into individual epitope bins has benefits for both basic research and therapeutic discovery. Some of these benefits include….
Each epitope corresponds to a different mechanism of action, ensuring that mAb's in the same bin have identical functionality. Therefore, by targeting different epitopes on one antigen, it is possible to increase the end effect by simultaneously activating multiple mechanisms of action.
Researchers can easily reduce the number of potential lead candidates by eliminating mAb's which target the same epitope of a non functional clone.
It is important to identify which epitope elicits the strongest effect rather than depending on the usual bias's to choose mAb's with the highest affinity or the most common epitope. This analysis can be accomplished by comparing the efficacy of mAb's which belong to different bins, ensuring that the most functional mAb-epitope pair is chosen for further analysis, rather than one chosen through bias.