Antibody discovery works best when high-throughput, high-resolution screening tools exist to quickly identify antibodies with desired binding and functional properties. Limitations on screening speed and depth have created long-standing challenges for antibody discovery scientists, forcing difficult prioritization choices during a step-wise antibody selection process that constrains the quantity and diversity of clones identified that fit the desired screening profile. The inability to perform deep, function-forward screening slows the pace of discovery, adds to project budgets, and increases the risk of project failure due to the length of time required to get a full understanding of the clones on hand.
Single B cell screening technology has promised to increase the throughput of antibody discovery since it first emerged two decades ago. Until recently, however, major commercial B cell screening methodologies have suffered from limited screening resolution that traps users into the same "step-wise" antibody selection process as other technologies, limiting users to basic binding screens with few recombinant reagents (or, with more advanced users, maybe a couple of cell lines). With most commercially available B cell screening technologies, antibody discovery scientists still must select dozens or hundreds of clones to advance to recombinant expression, even though they haven't yet been appropriately triaged for specificity and function. Higher-resolution B cell screening technology promises to limit wasted time and resources by increasing the amount of actionable data scientists have to make decisions on which clones to advance forward for additional testing, saving time and budget.
Abveris' Berkeley Lights Beacon-based single B cell screening platform enables rapid screening and identification of functional antibodies (picture below). This function-forward single B cell workflow can screen 10Ks to 100Ks of antibodies with 4x the resolution of other B cell screening technologies on the market in ONE day. Using the Beacon, our antibody discovery experts exhaustively screen each and every B cell for binding and function using an arsenal of cell-based and bead-based assay formats to rapidly focus on the most promising antibody candidates before the completion of a single day of screening. High-resolution screening data better inform decisions on which clones to advance to the next stage, resulting in significant overall cost and time savings for the antibody discovery process. In conjunction with our DiversimAb technology, this workflow is poised to be a powerhouse for the discovery of diverse functional hits against challenging targets, based on the broadened epitopic and sequence diversity of DiversimAb antibodies.
During a recent webinar of "Accelerated Discovery of Functionally Relevant Antibodies Leveraging Broadened Epitopic Diversity And Single B Cell Screening " our CEO, Tracey Mullen presents a case study from a therapeutic mAb discovery campaign. In this campaign, our DiversimAb hyperimmune mice and Beacon B cell screening platform are combined to rapidly identify a panel of fully validated, highly specific ligand-blocking antibodies in just over two months.
To learn more about the accelerated discovery services we provide to our partners, please visit our technical resource page.
