Single Cell Microgels for High-Throughput Magnetic Sorting and Sequencing of Antigen-Specific Antibodies

Progress in the discovery of potent antibodies for therapeutic and research purposes has been accelerated by mining the antibody repertoire of plasma cells and plasmablasts. Magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) is a well recognized method for cell sorting, however, secreted IgGs rapidly diffuse away from cells, therefore requiring specialized technique to compartmentalize individual cells and capture their secretions for MACS isolation. To this end, a scalable method to prepare hydrogel-based microcontainers for single cell culture and subsequent sorting based on their secreted IgG products at high-throughput level are described. In situ crosslinkable microgels featuring tunable viscosity are fabricated to act as soft compartments that accommodate delicate primary cells and capture secreted proteins, while providing solid supports after solgel transition to enable immune recognition with chemically functionalized magnetic nanorods in aqueous medium for MACS separation. Splenocytes are sorted based on antigen-specific IgG production from mice immunized with an antibiotic target ceftriaxone sodium, enriching a population of 220 000 000 to 800 000 prevalence following sorting. This enrichment ratio is substantially higher than conventional fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) methods, likely due to the multivalency of the antigen-conjugated magnetic nanorods.