Poster Presentation 43rd Lorne Genome Conference 2022

Streamlined sequencing of hybridomas and single B cells with Oxford Nanopore long-reads (#281)

Kathleen Zeglinski 1 , Hema Preethi Subas Satish 1 , Ruth Kluck 1 , Quentin Gouil 1
  1. WEHI, Parkville, VIC, Australia

As therapeutics, diagnostic and research tools, antibodies have revolutionised modern medicine1. Single B cells and hybridomas (B cells from immunised animals fused with myeloma cells2) are crucial tools in their study and development3, but it is also important to sequence their antibodies for further development and engineering. To date this sequencing has typically been performed with a time-consuming Sanger sequencing protocol, which is often outsourced at cost of more than USD$800 per antibody4. We have developed an Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing based approach and complementary bioinformatic pipeline that is capable of producing full-length, accurate antibody sequences in only two days, at a cost of approximately USD$145 per antibody. By taking the consensus of multiple reads, nanopore sequencing errors can be removed to generate sequences with 100% accuracy. This convenient method facilitates the time and cost-efficient sequencing of both hybridomas and single B cells, thereby streamlining the development of new antibodies.

  1. Kaplon, H., Muralidharan, M., Schneider, Z., & Reichert, J. (2019). Antibodies to watch in 2020. Mabs, 12(1), 1703531. doi: 10.1080/19420862.2019.1703531
  2. KÖHLER, G., & MILSTEIN, C. (1975). Continuous cultures of fused cells secreting antibody of predefined specificity. Nature, 256(5517), 495-497. doi: 10.1038/256495a0
  3. Mitra, S., & Tomar, P. (2021). Hybridoma technology; advancements, clinical significance, and future aspects. Journal Of Genetic Engineering And Biotechnology, 19(1). doi: 10.1186/s43141-021-00264-6
  4. Meyer, L., López, T., Espinosa, R., Arias, C., Vollmers, C., & DuBois, R. (2019). A simplified workflow for monoclonal antibody sequencing. PLOS ONE, 14(6), e0218717. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218717