Kauvar to talk on B cells Jan. 25 for science series

Larry Kauvar
Larry Kauvar

“Cloning Rare High Quality Therapeutic Antibodies Directly from B cells,” will be presented at 4 p.m. Jan. 25 by Larry Kauvar of Trellis Bioscience. The talk is part of the Biotechnology/Life Sciences Seminar Series and will take place at Beadle Center room E103.

Trellis’ platform technology (CellSpot) enables identifying potent, broadly neutralizing therapeutic antibodies, as demonstrated for three human viruses (RSV, CMV, Influenza). The platform embodies two key technological advances. First, the assay has been drastically miniaturized as compared to conventional hybridoma assays resulting in sensitivity that is ~1,000-fold higher and thereby adequate to characterize the antibody produced by single cells. To achieve this result, we needed to develop a microscopy-based assay. With automated digital microscopy in place, we then introduced the second key technology: multi-parameter characterization of each cell’s secreted antibody based on combinatorially colored fluorescent beads (“multiplexing”).

The combination of multiple selection criteria leads to a low frequency of candidate antibodies that meet all the criteria. Because of CellSpot’s ability to screen up to 1 million cells in a few days, it is possible to find rare, high quality antibodies that meet these stringent criteria.

The seminar begins at 4 p.m., preceded by a reception at 3:30 p.m. The seminar is free and open to the public.

The complete schedule of seminars may be found at http://biotech.unl.edu/