High-efficiency antibody discovery achieved with multiplexed microscopy.

Area of Science:

• Immunology
• Biotechnology
• Molecular Biology

Background:

• Secreted antibodies from B cells are crucial for diagnostics and therapeutics.
• Identifying antibodies with specific, rare attributes from large cell populations is challenging.
• Current methods may not efficiently screen diverse B cell repertoires.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a high-throughput method for analyzing B cells at the clonal level.
• To recover antibodies with rare attributes for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.
• To leverage diverse B cell populations for antibody discovery.

Main Methods:

• Immobilizing B cells within microdroplets containing particulate reporters.
• Decoding and isolating B cells using a microscopy-based environment.
• Screening up to 100 million cells in a single experiment.
• Utilizing primary B cell populations from evolutionarily divergent species, including chickens.

Main Results:

• Successfully recovered panels of antibodies with rare attributes.
• Demonstrated the ability to isolate antibodies targeting therapeutically relevant targets.
• Showcased the scalability of the method to screen large cell numbers.

Conclusions:

• The microdroplet-based B cell analysis enables efficient discovery of valuable antibodies.
• This approach significantly expands the scope of antibody discovery by including diverse species.
• The method holds promise for developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic agents.