Anti-Vimentin (L79) Antibody

Vimentin is a 57 kDa type III intermediate filament protein expressed in cells of mesenchymal origin. It is routinely used as a marker to distinguish mesenchymal from epithelial cells, to monitor epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in development and cancer models, and to help classify sarcomas and undifferentiated carcinomas in diagnostic pathology. The L79 epitope lies in a region that is conserved across mammals, which is why the same reagent can detect the human, mouse, and rat proteins in standard western blot and immunohistochemistry workflows.

This unconjugated rabbit polyclonal antibody is supplied by Antibodies.com as 100 µl of a 1 mg/ml stock in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) containing 0.05% sodium azide at approximately pH 7.2. Because it is polyclonal, the reagent recognises several epitopes on vimentin and tolerates minor fixation-induced changes in tissue sections, which is useful for archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded material as well as fresh frozen sections and cultured cell lysates.

Typical applications include characterising cultured fibroblasts, mesenchymal stem cells, and cancer cell lines undergoing EMT, confirming the stromal or mesenchymal identity of patient-derived xenografts, and pairing vimentin staining with cytokeratins and other lineage markers in routine diagnostic immunohistochemistry panels for tumour classification and origin studies.