Innovative technique developed to produce antibodies

Generating antibodies rapidly in a laboratory could help to treat a wide range of diseases and develop new vaccines.

Researchers have developed a novel approach to generate human antibodies rapidly in the laboratory. This groundbreaking method not only speeds up the production of antibodies to treat many diseases, but it could also be used in the development of new vaccines.

Facundo Batista, from the Francis Crick Institute in London in the United Kingdom, led the team of scientists. Their research was published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

B cells are specialized defender cells that produce antibodies to fight off infections caused by pathogens, which can be bacteria, viruses, or other microorganisms that cause disease. An individual B cell recognizes a particular pathogen-derived antigen, which is a substance that induces an immune response in the body.

Upon recognizing the antigen, the B cells quickly multiply, or proliferate, and develop into plasma cells that secrete vast amounts of antibody that bind to the antigen to fight the infection.

Treating B cells with coated nanoparticles

Previously, scientists have tried to replicate this "infection fending off" process in a laboratory by producing specific antibodies from B cells isolated from patient blood samples.

B cells need two signals to begin proliferation and develop into plasma cells. Encountering and recognizing a specific antigen provides the first signal, and short DNA fragments called CpG oligonucleotides provide the second. CpG oligonucleotides trigger proliferation by activating a protein inside B cells known as TLR9.

Experiments have shown that when patient-derived B cells are treated with CpG oligonucleotides, it is not just the B cells that are capable of secreting a particular antibody that are stimulated; the CpG oligonucleotides stimulate every B cell in the sample