Rapid microfluidic platform for screening and enrichment of cells secreting virus neutralizing antibodies
Weikang Nicholas Lin, Matthew Zirui Tay, Joel Xu En Wong, Chia Yin Lee, Siew‐Wai Fong, Cheng‐I Wang, Lisa F. P. Ng, Laurent Rénia, Chia‐Hung Chen, Lih Feng Cheow
Abstract
picoinjection. In addition, we demonstrate the ability of the sorting system to accurately discriminate and isolate uninfected droplets from a mixed population of droplets at a rate of 150 000 cells per hour. As a proof of concept, a single-cell neutralization assay was performed on two populations of cells (nAb-producing and non-Ab producing cells), and up to 2.75-fold enrichment of ASCs was demonstrated. Finally, we demonstrated that DROP-PEARL is able to achieve similar enrichment for low frequency (∼2%) functional nAb-producing cells in a background of excess cells secreting irrelevant antibodies, highlighting its potential prospect as a first round enrichment platform for functional ASCs. We envision that the DROP-PEARL platform could potentially be used to accelerate the discovery of nAbs against other pathogenic viral targets, and we believe it will be a useful in the ongoing fight against biological threats.