Purification of antibodies by the use of biochemical and immunochemical techniques

For many biochemical applications including immunohistology, not only highly specific antibodies are of great importance, the degree of purity with respect to the bulk of contaminating proteins in sera is also a matter of concern. Even if sometimes hyperimmune sera may work quite well, it is preferable to get familiar with the most applied procedures and to select a dedicated way for the antibody purification. While the conjugation of antibodies with enzyme molecules will always need highly purified antibodies, in other cases such as in indirect immuno-stainings (in which the primary antibodies are not labeled) an immunoglobulin fraction of the hyperimmune serum containing the primary antibodies will be sufficient. In this connection it must be noted that partial purification (instead of a high degree of purification) is not under all circumstances an disadvantage because contaminating proteins (f.e. albumin) can act as protector colloids which will avoid aggregation of the antibodies.