Expert view: Advancing antibody discovery with picodroplet technology

This increased focus on biologics discovery increases the pressure to reduce discovery and development timelines, resulting in the need for more efficient screening and more precise methods for mAb production.¹

Current methods used in antibody discovery such as hybridomas, humanisation of rodent antibodies and display technologies are well established with proven success rates – more than 60 mAbs have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).^1,2,3 However, the semi-automated technologies currently used are not efficient enough to meet the growing demand for new therapeutics, being time-consuming, resource-intensive with a low screening throughput of antibody-secreting cells. Therefore, there is an urgent need for novel technologies to enable the high-throughput screening, detection and isolation of those rare cells secreting antigen-specific antibodies.