Antibodies are a major line of defence against infection and our bodies can create them (by changing the part of the antibody that recognises the invading pathogen) very quickly to help incapacitate a multitude of biological invaders. Antibodies are also used in medicine and scientific research. PRe-ART and its follow-on project PRe-ART-2T focus on the latter – antibodies for use in scientific research.
There is currently a big difference between antibodies used as medicines, known as “therapeutic antibodies” and those used in research. Like any other medicine, therapeutic antibodies are very tightly regulated and exceptionally expensive. Their high price results from the massive research effort involved in creating and characterising them and especially, in their clinical trials.
In contrast, research antibodies (otherwise known as “reagent antibodies”) are never injected into people but are used to detect proteins of interest in fundamental biological research and in diagnostics. Without them, much research and detection of disease would be impossible. Yet many research antibodies are not nearly as specific as presumed. Many are poorly characterized and in fact, as of 2015, about half of commercial research antibodies were shown not to function correctly. As of 2025, the situation is not much improved. In March 2025, the global research antibody market was estimated to be ~$3.7 billion annually*, of which the top 9 countries in the EU comprise a market of ~$1.5 billion alone*. At 50% non-functional antibodies and current exchange rates, this equates to an annual wastage of approximately €0.7 billion (industrial and academic research spend) each year in the EU alone and that cost is purely for the antibodies. The waste of money on salaries and time on experiments that fail, or worse, experiments that appear to have worked – only to find that they are wrong or can’t be reproduced, is unfathomable. The status quo continues largely because research antibodies are cheap (typically around €300-€500 per sample for common antibodies from a catalogue sold to many customers, while custom-made ones can still cost several thousands). In contrast, typical doses of therapeutic antibodies cost tens of thousands of Euros. The most reputable suppliers have started to guarantee suitable performance for some of their antibodies for specific targets, but those guarantees usually extend only to antibody replacement or refund and do not encompass wasted salaries and time. Research is very rarely funded to the level where purchase of therapeutic-grade antibodies is remotely possible, and so the money just isn’t there to justify the suppliers in making a vast array of high-quality research antibodies.
The purpose of PRe-ART and Pre-ART-2T was to solve this problem. Horizon 2020 FET-OPEN project PRe-ART developed the contributing technologies, while Horizon EU EIC transition project PRe-ART-2T is completing that technology, having tested it in our own and an independent industrial laboratory. We have created a radically new process to make synthetic antibody replacements that have the quality of therapeutic antibodies at the price of standard research antibodies, so that ultimately, all researchers – academic and industrial, can afford high quality research "antibodies" and thus eliminate such terrible wastage. Moreover, for many targets of academic and industrial research interests, no suitable antibodies are available.
We next plan to start a company to sell our antibody replacements, first industrialising the processes (working with initial partners) and then going to the open market to make our antibody replacements available to all research scientists, academic and in companies. From the 2025 marketing figures above, if we captured even 5% of the research antibody market, we would eliminate €35 million of wasted research funds per annum for EU researchers alone, with the potential to eliminate $185 million worldwide.
*360i Research, Research Antibodies Market Global Forecast 2025-2030 (published February 2025). EU-specific market data from Table 5.
