Lutz' and Christoph's paper on high-throughput isolation of fully human antibodies is published in Nature Protocols

Effective high-throughput isolation of fully human antibodies targeting infectious pathogens 

Gieselmann L, Kreer C, Ercanoglu MS, Lehnen N, Zehner M, Schommers P, Potthoff J, Gruell H, Klein F.

Nat Protoc. 2021 Jul;16(7):3639-3671. doi: 10.1038/s41596-021-00554-w. Epub 2021 May 25. PMID: 34035500

Abstract

As exemplified by the ongoing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, there is a strong demand for rapid high-throughput isolation pipelines to identify potent neutralizing antibodies for prevention and therapy of infectious diseases. However, despite substantial progress and extensive efforts, the identification and production of antigen-specific antibodies remains labor- and cost-intensive. We have advanced existing concepts to develop a highly efficient high-throughput protocol with proven application for the isolation of potent antigen-specific antibodies against human immunodeficiency virus 1, hepatitis C virus, human cytomegalovirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 and Ebola virus. It is based on computationally optimized multiplex primer sets (openPrimeR), which guarantee high coverage of even highly mutated immunoglobulin gene segments as well as on optimized antibody cloning and production strategies. Here, we provide the detailed protocol, which covers all critical steps from sample collection to antibody production within 12-14 d. Nat Protoc. 2021