Developing a workflow for the isolation of hybridoma cells producing fully human antigen-specific antibodies using a surface IgG detection method

Abstract The antigen-mediated B cell isolation method, based on the detection of surface IgG (sIgG), has increased the efficiency of therapeutic antibody (Ab) discovery. However, the reduction in sIgG expression on B cells during plasma cell differentiation presents challenges as it enables Ab production from only a small subset of B cells (e.g., memory B cells). The present study aimed to addressed this problem by developing a workflow to isolate human-IgG-secreting hybridoma cells produced by cell fusion, the majority of which express sIgG. We showed that our sIgG-based antigen-coated bead separation method efficiently enriched hybridoma cells expressing antigen-specific Abs with a yield of 83.5% (from the cell fusion pool) and a positive rate of 73.2%. Furthermore, because the separation could be performed after only a short (1−2-day) culture period following cell fusion, diverse hybridoma clones could be obtained, minimizing clonal selection and the incidence of duplicates. Given that the expression of membrane-bound IgG and sIgG are regulated by different splicing mechanisms, we speculate that the cell fusion step potentially attenuated the suppression of human sIgG expression. Overall, our proposed method is expected to markedly improve the efficiency of therapeutic Ab candidate production, which will have important clinical implications.