Expert view: Advancing antibody discovery with picodroplet technology

This increased focus on biologics discovery increases the pressure to reduce discovery and development timelines, resulting in the need for more efficient screening and more precise methods for mAb production.¹

Current methods used in antibody discovery such as hybridomas, humanisation of rodent antibodies and display technologies are well established with proven success rates – more than 60 mAbs have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).^1,2,3 However, the semi-automated technologies currently used are not efficient enough to meet the growing demand for new therapeutics, being time-consuming, resource-intensive with a low screening throughput of antibody-secreting cells. Therefore, there is an urgent need for novel technologies to enable the high-throughput screening, detection and isolation of those rare cells secreting antigen-specific antibodies.

The emergence of microfluidic-based picodroplet technology platforms, like the Cyto-Mine^® single-cell analysis system, provides an integrated solution that enables the rapid screening of millions of cells and their secreted antibodies. The core technology involves the encapsulation of a single cell within a picolitre volume aqueous droplet (picodroplet), which provides a uniquely protective and supportive environment where secreted proteins can be trapped and assayed. This approach is rapid yet gentle and allows single B cells secreting antigenspecific antibodies to be isolated from large populations.

A major benefit of picodroplet technology is that the picodroplets enable a highly concentrated single-cell assay, with the concentration of secreted antibodies in the picodroplet being approximately five to six orders of magnitude higher than conventional assays.

By combining cell isolation, screening and antigenspecific assays into a fully automated workflow, this powerful technology is poised to revolutionise antibody discovery by addressing the key needs for reduced costs, higher throughput and greater sensitivity, offering a solution to accelerate drug discovery and development.