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Updated: Aug 20, 2026

Laboratory Scale Production and Purification of a Therapeutic Antibody
Published on: January 24, 2017
Building an antibody factory: a job for the unfolded protein response
Joseph W Brewer1, Linda M Hendershot
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University Chicago, Maywood, Illinois 60153, USA.
Abstract:
Plasma cells are highly specialized, terminally differentiated secretory cells that produce tremendous quantities of a single product, the antibody molecule. In differentiating from a quiescent B cell, the plasma cell must undergo a dramatic architectural metamorphosis. This process entails augmenting the secretory organelles and the proteins that populate them, upregulating their energy and translation potential, and increasing the quality control system to do the job. This transformation is accomplished by an interplay between B lineage-specific transcriptional programs that control plasma cell differentiation and an unfolded protein response.
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