Our History; Prior to working in EnCor, we were full time researchers working in neuroscience, structural biology and cell biology. We found that good antibody reagents were essential to get any kind of quality data and we also found that many commercial reagents were not of high enough quality to be useful. In fact many of them were a waste of both time and money. As a result we often made our own reagents which then became popular with other researchers; we had taken the trouble to understand their specificity and utility and could document these findings. At EnCor we are building on this experience by generating further reagents which we extensively characterize. We are confident that these reagents will work as advertized in the assays we have described. In most cases the antibodies are selected from a panel of reagents, so they are not simply the result of one attempt to make an antibody to a particular protein. We have also instituted rigorous quality control in antibody manufacturing so that there is little if any batch to batch variability.
Our Original Focus; Every company should have an area of focus; we are a company which grew out of research in the general areas of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, so the vast majority of our reagents are aimed in these areas. We also found that antibodies which can be used as standard lab reagents to identify cell types, developmental stages, cell structures or pathological alterations were particular valuable and marketable, and so we have concentrated on the generation of such products. This explains our focus on neurofilament proteins, MAP proteins, GFAP, UCHL1, NSE and many others, all of which are useful not just to scientists interested in those particular proteins but also to those who want to use antibodies as useful cell type, structural, developmental, damage or disease markers.
A Newer Focus; The proteins we have targeted happen to be among the most abundant of the nervous system and many are useful since they are only found in certain cell types. It is obvious that when nervous tissue is damaged or degenerates these proteins will be released into cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood, where they may be detected with appropriate antibodies. So detection of neurofilament proteins or UCHL1, both only found in neurons, provides evidence that neurons are dying. Detection of GFAP would indicate astrocytic death and compromise to the blood brain barrier. Detection of these proteins requires specific antibody reagents and is usually done using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISA). Since we have made large panels of antibodies to these proteins we have been able to develop many such ELISA assays, some of which are already marketed with many more in progress. So a second and newer focus of our company is the development and running of assays for informative biomarker proteins which are proving to be useful in both research and clinical contexts.
A Third Focus; Finally, as part of generating data to show that our antibodies work as they should, we have invested heavily in showing that they work well not only on western blots but especially in immunofluorescence and immunocytochemistry. This has resulted in the generation of images which we have been complemented on many times, and which other companies have used for advertising and other purposes over many years. So we recently decided to market some of these images and they provide the third and newest focus of our company. So you can now order high quality prints of these directly from our site. In addition we are able to offer the same images as Christmas wrapping paper and wall paper! Contact us at admin@encorbio.com if you are interested in this.
Summary; Based on our previous experiences we also think that antibodies and antibody based kits are in general overpriced, particularly if they do not work as advertised. Our philosophy is therefore a simple one, we will only sell a reagent if we think that it is good enough to produce high quality results, capable of producing the same results reliably in other laboratories and of producing data which will survive rigorous peer review. So we sell excellent products at reasonable prices.
