Published in

American Association of Immunologists, The Journal of Immunology, 12(199), p. 4180-4188, 2017

DOI: 10.4049/jimmunol.1701253

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Isolation and Characterization of Antigen-Specific Plasmablasts Using a Novel Flow Cytometry–Based Ig Capture Assay

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

Abstract We report the development of a novel flow cytometry–based Ig capture assay (ICA) for the identification and sorting of individual Ab-secreting cells based on their Ag reactivity. The ICA represents a fast and versatile tool for single-cell sorting of peripheral plasmablasts, streamlining subsequent Ab analysis, and cloning. We demonstrate the utility of the assay by isolating Ag-reactive plasmablasts from cryopreserved PBMC obtained from volunteers vaccinated with a recombinant HIV envelope protein. To show the specificity of the ICA, we produced Ag-specific Abs from these cells and subsequently verified their Ag reactivity via ELISA. Furthermore, we used the ICA to track Ag-specific plasmablast responses in HIV-vaccine recipients over a period of 42 d and performed a head-to-head comparison with a conventional B cell ELISpot. Results were highly comparable, highlighting that this assay is a viable alternative for monitoring Ag-specific plasmablast responses at early time points after infection or vaccination. The ICA provides important added benefits in that phenotypic information can be obtained from the identified Ag-specific cells that can then be captured for downstream applications such as B cell sequencing and/or Ab cloning. We envisage the ICA as being a useful tool in Ab repertoire analysis for future clinical trials.