Microfluidic analysis of the antibody pool after vaccination

Nature Biotechnology has published an article first-authored by Branco Weiss Fellow Klaus Eyer about the work on functional single-cell analysis of antibody secreting cells. The work was performed as a collaboration between researchers from the laboratory of “Chemistry, Biology and Innovation” (ESPCI Paris/CNRS), the unit “Antibodies in Therapy and Pathology” (Institute Pasteur/INSERM) as well as HiFiBio SAS Paris, an ESPCI Paris based Start-up company. The paper describes a novel microfluidic technological approach to characterize the antibody pool that is generated upon vaccination.

The simple to use technology has sufficient throughput to precisely analyze tens-of-thousands of cells within a short time, and to extract a variety of biophysical parameters during the process. This deep-phenotyping has been applied in the paper to follow tetanus toxoid vaccination in mice, and revealed new insights into the generation and evolution of the vaccine-specific cells.

Currently, efforts are made to further characterize and understand the biological mechanisms that lead to successful vaccination. The authors are further convinced that this new technology will be of tremendous value in functionally analyzing other highly heterogeneous populations, such as cancer tissues.

Read the paper on the Nature Biotechnology website

Read the press release on the CNRS website (French)