Abstract

Automating Antibody Discovery

Simon Tickle, Principal Scientist, UCB Pharma

The presentation will describe UCB’s core antibody discovery platform which combines an automated high-throughput B cell culture screening system, with the ability to identify and isolate a single, antigen specific, IgG-secreting B cell. This is done through a proprietary technique called the ‘fluorescent foci method’. Using a state of the art, automated screening system, the natural antibody repertoire can be interrogated extremely efficiently. More than one billion immune B cells can now be screened to identify the rare therapeutic antibody candidates, which meet the many stringent selection criteria. The talk will describe the design, construction, commissioning and running of a bespoke automated screening platform for therapeutic antibodies. The process is underpinned by careful design and implementation of appropriate primary and secondary screens The platform provides efficiency savings and improvements in antibody quality. We will describe how it has linked through the process control software to the in house data handling systems to create a very efficient screening process.