Representative transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of a B cell stimulated in vitro with CpG/antigen particle, showing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) characteristic of a plasma cell.SANJUAN NANDIN I., DOMART, M-C; COLLINSON, L. From life-saving diagnostics and treatments to essential reagents, it’s hard to overstate the importance of antibodies in the biomedical world. Thus far there’s always been one hitch or another in the goal to rapidly and easily generate highly specific, high-affinity, fully human antibodies at relatively low cost. By a simple tweak to an established protocol, researchers have developed a platform that may bring the field closer to that goal.
In The Journal of Experimental Medicine on July 24, Facundo Batista, associate director of the Ragon Institute, and colleagues describe an in vitro method by which the signal to activate antibody-producing cells is delivered only in the presence of specific antigen—a technique that enables antigen-specific B cells to be enriched more than 1,000-fold in just a few days, without needing to vaccinate the donor or extensively screen cell culture for rare cells.
“There are multiple ways to make or isolate human monoclonal antibodies, but they all have their flaws,” notes Shane Crotty, a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, who was not involved in the study, by email. “Batista has developed a new technique that is independent of previous techniques and ...
