High-throughput single-cell activity-based screening and sequencing of antibodies using droplet microfluidics

Lien vers Pubmed [PMID] – 32231335

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Lien DOI – 10.1038/s41587-020-0466-7

Nat Biotechnol . 2020 Jun;38(6):715-721. doi: 10.1038/s41587-020-0466-7. Epub 2020 Mar 30.

Mining the antibody repertoire of plasma cells and plasmablasts could enable the discovery of useful antibodies for therapeutic or research purposes¹. We present a method for high-throughput, single-cell screening of IgG-secreting primary cells to characterize antibody binding to soluble and membrane-bound antigens. CelliGO is a droplet microfluidics system that combines high-throughput screening for IgG activity, using fluorescence-based in-droplet single-cell bioassays², with sequencing of paired antibody V genes, using in-droplet single-cell barcoded reverse transcription. We analyzed IgG repertoire diversity, clonal expansion and somatic hypermutation in cells from mice immunized with a vaccine target, a multifunctional enzyme or a membrane-bound cancer target. Immunization with these antigens yielded 100-1,000 IgG sequences per mouse. We generated 77 recombinant antibodies from the identified sequences and found that 93% recognized the soluble antigen and 14% the membrane antigen. The platform also allowed recovery of ~450-900 IgG sequences from ~2,200 IgG-secreting activated human memory B cells, activated ex vivo, demonstrating its versatility.