Single Cell mAB Discovery: ; Discovering Therapeutic Antibodies Invisible to Current Screening Platforms
Summary Monoclonal antibodies, including the epitope specific antibodies, represent a rapidly growing pharmaceutical segment, driven by the need for targeted therapeutics and growing knowledge of disease pathways. However, despite the high value of therapeutic mABs, discovery techniques have not advanced accordingly. For example, discovering a mAB with desired specificity is a time-consuming process often using inefficient serial dilution methods to isolate the desired mAB from a polyclonal mixture of cells. Next generation techniques for faster isolation of hybridomas could drastically improve the throughput and specificity of discovery efforts.A novel method has been invented to assay single cells for monoclonal antibody production, with the potential to increase mAB discovery throughput by an estimated 2-3 orders of magnitude. The platform leverages soft lithography microengraving to generate PDMS-molded micro wells that can assay nL amounts of secreted antibody from a single cell. In addition, the platform is able to perform time series analysis of cell secretions, and to conduct multiple assays on clones targeting different antibody epitopes and specificities. This is achieved using disposable slides that are exposed to the wells, and that bind cell-secreted products using covalently immobilized secondary antibodies or antigens. Slides can then be interrogated in a manner similar to commercial protein or antibody micro arrays, via techniques such as fluorescent detection or mass spectroscopy.
Applications A promising application for the technology will be in therapeutic antibody discovery, with the potential to discover rare and epitope-specific hybridomas invisible to current methods. Secreted products other than antibodies may also be measured using the platform. Such functionality may provide useful diagnostic and discovery tools to monitor immunological responses to therapeutic or vaccine candidates, or for measuring the population frequency of cells that produce a specific secreted factor. For Further Information Please Contact the Director of Business Development Michal Preminger Email: [email protected] Telephone: (617) 432-0920
Inventor(s): Ploegh, Hidde L
Type of Offer: Licensing
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