A New System for the Enrichment of Cell Subclones Secreting High Levels of IgG Using Magnetic Cell Sorting (MACS® Technology)

In this study, we demonstrate the effect of MACS® Separation on the diversification pattern of the specific production rate (SPR) of heterogeneous IgG-secreting cell populations. Magnetic separation prior to single-cell subcloning results in an effectively reduced frequency of low antibody-producing clones in comparison to populations without separation. Thereby, we were able to gain clones with higher SPRs (up to 85 pg/cell/day) which were not detectable in the non-separated population. Additionally it was possible to increase the SPR of two antibody-secreting cell populations by MACS® Technology without additional subcloning by a factor of 4 and 37, respectively. A further magnetic enrichment step led to an up to 48-fold increase of the SPR compared to non-separated cells.