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Updated: May 16, 2026

Single-cell Screening Method for the Selection and Recovery of Antibodies with Desired Specificities from Enriched Human Memory B Cell Populations
Published on: August 22, 2019
A two-step non-flowcytometry-based naïve B cell isolation method and its application in Staphylococcal enterotoxin B
Kaj Chokeshai-u-saha1, Supranee Buranapraditkun, Alain Jacquet
1Division of Allergy and Clinical immunology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Background:
To study the role of human naïve B cells in antigen presentation and stimulation to naïve CD4+ T cell, a suitable method to reproducibly isolate sufficient naïve B cells is required.
Methods:
To improve the purity of isolated naive B cells obtained from a conventional one-step magnetic bead method, we added a rosetting step to enrich total B cell isolates from human whole blood samples prior to negative cell sorting by magnetic beads. The acquired naïve B cells were analyzed for phenotypes and for their role in Staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) presentation to naïve CD4+ T cells.
Results:
The mean (SD) naïve B cell (CD19+/CD27-) purity obtained from this two-step method compared with the one-step method was 97% (1.0) versus 90% (1.2), respectively. This two-step method can be used with a sample of whole blood as small as 10 ml. The isolated naive B cells were phenotypically at a resting state and were able to prime naïve CD4+ T cell activation by Staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) presentation.
Conclusions:
This two-step non-flow cytometry-based approach improved the purity of isolated naïve B cells compared with conventional one-step magnetic bead method. It also worked well with a small blood volume. In addition, this study showed that the isolated naïve B cells can present a super-antigen "SEB" to activate naïve CD4 cells. These methods may thus be useful for further in vitro characterization of human naïve B cells and their roles as antigen presenting cells in various diseases.

