EnCor Biotechnology Inc.
Our goal is to be the leader in the development and commercialization of unique, well-characterized antibody reagents for academic, biopharmaceutical and clinical research. We are an established and well respected company and if you check out Google Scholar you will find that we have been mentioned in the current literature over 1,150 times as of January 23 2025, see here. If we say that an antibody will work in a particular assay, rest assured that it will, we know because we tested it and can show you the data. Since we develop, characterize and manufacture all of the reagents we sell, we can also offer very competitive pricing! To learn more about us press here.
Overview
Our reagents are made, characterized, manufactured and tested in house with routine QC of every lot, with all test results freely available.
Right: Wikipedia's astrocyte image was made in the EnCor lab using our chicken antibody to GFAP (CPCA-GFAP, green) and mouse monoclonal antibody to vimentin (MCA-2A52, red). The antibodies bind intermediate filaments containing both proteins producing a yellow signal. Our image is very widely used in books, journals, sites and other venues.
Novel neurofilament NF-L antibodies such as MCA-6H63, MCA-1B11 and MCA-1D44 shown in red at right recognize degenerating neurons and processes, while others such as RPCA-NF-L-ct and MCA-DA2 only bind undamaged neuronal material, see our Brain Communications article for details.
Right: Rat spinal cord 5 days after spinal cord injury stained with an antibody to intact NF-L in green and degenerated NF-L in red.
We collaborate with many outside labs, and also do research in house resulting in peer reviewed publications. For recent examples See Fusco et al 2025, Shaw et al. 2023, Gopinath et al 2022, and Petzold et al. 2020.
Right: Rat cerebellar molecular layer (top) and granule layer (bottom) showing microglia in green with RPCA-IBA-1 and Purkinje cell perikarya and dendrites in red with CPCA-MAP2.
Many of our images are available for free use on Wikimedia Commons see EnCor images here. Also see our Youtube movie of HeLa Cells showing staining with our antibodies to actin, β-tubulin, fibrillarin and HSP60 along with a nuclear DNA stain. Another Youtube movie of Rat Hippocampus shows the use of our antibodies to Fox3/NeuN, neurofilament NF-H, GFAP and MAP2, revealing nuclei, neuronal perikarya, axons, dendrites and astrocytes.
Featured products- Novel c-FOS Antibodies Optimized for ICC and IHC
Our antibodies to the immediate early gene product c-FOS are very widely used as sold by EnCor and by the very many companies that resell our reagents. When cells become activated by growth factors, neurotransmitters, damage or stress a common response is to rapidly and transiently activate the expression of several genes, the best known being c-FOS, The c-FOS protein is a transcriptional regulator which activates the expression of many other genes. Following stimulation levels of c-FOS rapidly increase and then rapidly decline, so that cells expressing large amounts of c-FOS are in the process of activating downstream gene expression. We have generated two widely used antibodies to c-FOS, mouse monoclonal MCA-2H2 and rabbit polyclonal RPCA-c-FOS. More recently we have developed a novel mouse monoclonal antibody MCA-1B62 designed specifically to work well on floating sections. All three antibodies work well on western blots and detect heavy expression of c-FOS in activated cultured human cells.



Left: the MCA-1B62 antibody was made against recombinant full length human c-FOS and can be used to identify activated cells in cell culture and in sectioned material. The antibody was developed specifically to be insensitive to aldehyde fixation using ability to bind activated neurons in floating sections as part of the screening process. We have also generated an alternate mouse monoclonal antibody to c-FOS MCA-2H2 and a rabbit polyclonal antibody to c-FOS, RPCA-c-FOS, which have generally similar properties. While all three work well on western blots and IHC, the MCA-1B62 and RPCA-c-FOS reagents are more sensitive than MCA-2H2 on floating sections.
Mouse Monoclonal Antibody to c-FOS (cFos, Fos, AP-1) Cat# MCA-1B62
Featured products- Antibodies to FOX3/NeuN
Many years ago Mullen et al. 1992 described a mouse monoclonal antibody, named A60, which stained the vast majority of neurons, mostly in the nucleus but spreading to the proximal cytoplasm in certain cells. They named the protein to which the antibody bound "NeuN" for neuronal nuclei. The antibody became widely used even though the identity of the NeuN protein was unknown for many years. Finally KIm et al. 2009 showed that NeuN was actually FOX3, a neuron specific RNA binding protein. We made a panel of high quality FOX3/NeuN antibodies in mouse, rabbit, chicken and goat. Our antibodies are epitope mapped and we document that our monoclonal antibody MCA-1B7 binds FOX3/NeuN with greater affinity and has a higher titre than A60. The antibody is widely used see Google Scholar search and is also considerably cheaper than other alternatives.



Mouse Monoclonal Antibody to FOX3/NeuN (Rbfox3, Hrnbp3) Cat# MCA-1B7
Left: The MCA-1B7 antibody was raised against a recombinant human FOX3 construct based on the N-terminal 100 amino acids, a region divergent from other FOX3 family members. FOX3 is also known as NeuN, and is a well established neuronal marker. The epitope for MCA-1B7 is located in amino acids 5-24 of human FOX3 (see here for details), and we also have determined the antibody binding kinetics. We document that the antibody works well for western blotting and for IF, ICC and IHC. We have also generated high quality goat, chicken and rabbit polyclonal antibodies to FOX3/NeuN, GPCA-FOX3, CPCA-FOX3 and RPCA-FOX3 respectively.
Featured products- Antibodies to Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP)
Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP) is an intermediate or 10nm filament subunit and is expressed in mature astrocytes, certain radial glia, non-myelinating Schwann cells and neural stem cells. Our chicken antibody is very widely used especially to visualize astrocytic cells in cell culture and in tissue sections, see Google Scholar search for CPCA-GFAP.. There is also considerable interest in GFAP as a biomarker of neurodegeneration. We have generated a panel of epitope mapped mouse monoclonal antibodies and a panel of polyclonal antibodies made in rabbit, chicken and goat.



Chicken Polyclonal Antibody to GFAP Cat# CPCA-GFAP
The CPCA-GFAP antibody was made against full length human recombinant GFAP, Prot-r-GFAP, expressed in and purified from <em>E. coli</em>. We document that the antibody works well not only for western blotting, IF and ICC but also on formalin fixed paraffin embedded IHC sections. The same GFAP immunogen was used to produce rabbit, RPCA-GFAP, and goat, GPCA-GFAP polyclonal antibodies. Using different immunogens, EnCor manufactures several other widely used mouse monoclonal antibodies to GFAP, MCA-5C10, MCA-2A5, and MCA-3E10.
Featured products- Antibodies to Microtubule Associated Protein 2 (MAP2)
Microtubule associated protein 2 (MAP2) is an abundant and well studied protein heavily expressed only in neuronal perikarya and dendrites but not axons. Several gene products from the single mammalian MAP2 gene produce smaller ~70kDa forms MAP2C and D as visualized on SDS-PAGE. Larger forms, MAP2A and B appear as ~250kDa bands on SDS-PAGE. The larger forms include the sequence of the smaller forms plus a large protein insert which produces the so-called "projection domain" which can be seen in the electron microscope as fine filaments projecting form the side of neuronal microtubules. Early in neuronal development only MAPC and D are expressed while later in development the MAP2A and B forms become expressed in bulk. We have generated a panel of high quality antibodies made in mouse, chicken, rabbit and goat with defined specificities to these various MAP2 isoforms.




Chicken Polyclonal Antibody to MAP2A/B Cat# CPCA-MAP2
Left: CPCA-MAP2 was raised against recombinant constructs encompassing the entire human projection domain, and so recognizes only the high molecular MAP2 forms, MAP2A/B and not MAP2C/D. We document that it works well not only for western blotting, IF and ICC but also for IHC on formalin fixed paraffin embedded sections of human and rodent tissues. This antibody is very widely used and sold through many vendors, see Google Scholar search for CPCA-MAP2. We also generated MAP2 isoforms specific monoclonal antibodies MCA-2C4, MCA-4H5 and MCA-5H11, and also made a range of isotype specific rabbit and goat polyclonal MAP2 antibodies.
Featured Products- Neurodegeneration Specific Antibodies
Our research program developed a series of antibodies specific for proteolysed forms of the neurofilament light chain (NF-L), a major protein of axons. These antibodies, such as MCA-6H63, MCA-1D44 and RPCA-NF-L-Degen are unique reagents for the identification and visualization of damaged and degenerating axons. The epitopes for these antibodies are embedded in assembled neurofilaments but not in partially degraded material and they therefore recognize only degenerating and degenerated axons. We also have antibodies which bind to proteolytically sensitive sites on neurofilaments which are rapidly destroyed on axonal degeneration. These antibodies, for example our MCA-DA2 and RPCA-NF-L-ct, therefore only only label healthy axons.




Mouse Monoclonal Antibody to Neurofilament NF-L (Nfl, NEFL) DegenoTag™ Peptide Cat# MCA-6H63
Left: rat spinal cord section taken 5 days after experimental C3 spinal cord injury, resulting in damage to sensory and motor axons, stained with MCA-6H63 in green and RPCA-NF-L-ct in red. MCA-6H63 binds an epitope on NF-L inaccessible to antibodies in healthy axons but exposed in degenerating and degenerated axons. In contrast RPCA-NF-L-ct recognizes only undegraded forms of NF-L, since it binds epitopes rapidly lost on degeneration. The image shows significant axonal damage in the dorsal columns, containing sensory axons at the top of the image while damaged motor axons are visible in the lateral funiculi. Processes fixed in the process of degenerating stain with both antibodies, appearing yellow and can be visualized under higher magnification. Full details are described in our recent peer-reviewed publication in Brain Communications.
Featured Product-High Quality TDP43 Antibody
We have documented that our mouse monoclonal antibody to TDP43 works well for western blots and for IF, ICC and IHC of human and rodent material. We have also measured the kinetic properties of this antibody and mapped the epitope to a region immediatly C-terminal to the second RNA binding domain and immediately N-terminal to the peptide segment known to associate with annexin a11 in FTLD-TDP43 type C, see Arseni et al. Nature 2024.




Mouse Monoclonal Antibody to TDP43 Cat# MCA-3H8
Left: the MCA-3H8 antibody was made against full length recombinant human TDP43 protein and works well on western blots, by IF, ICC and IHC, staining normal neurons and inclusions in FTLD, ALS and Alzheimer's disease. The antibody binds amino acids 264-283, C-terminal to second RRM domain of the human sequence, see our epitope map here). This peptide is 100% conserved in a wide variety of mammalian species so it is likely that the antibody is effective on many species beside human and rodents. The KD for this antibody in 1.16 X 10-9M and it is also an excellent marker of nuclei in cell fractionation experiments. It has become widely used, see Google Scholar search for MCA-3H8.
Featured products- Antibodies to Tyrosine Hydroxylase
Tyrosine hydroxylase is a major cytoplasmic enzyme of chatecholaminergic neurons. High quality antiubodies to this important enzyme are therefore useful for studies of these important cells. Our antibodies are of very high quality and work well for western blotting, IF, ICC and IHC on human and rodent tissues. We also document the use of two of these antibodies in an ELISA assay now published in peer reviewed form, see here.



Rabbit Polyclonal Antibody to Tyrosine Hydroxylase RPCA-TH
Our Most Widely Used Products
Featured blog
January 2025 News
We just put our new website on-line, and we hope you like it! Sadly we have had...
December 2024 News
We release a novel and extremely high quality monoclonal antibody to c-FOS MCA-1B62. This antibody was screened...
September 2024 News
We went to the big Society of Neuroscience Meeting in November in Chicago. As usual we got...
August 2024 News
We added a new rabbit polyclonal antibody to MAP2 RPCA-MAP2ABCD. This recognizes all isotypes of MAP2, both high...