Large-scale antibody immune response mapping of splenic B cells and bone marrow plasma cells in a transgenic mouse model.

Molecular characterization of antibody immunity and human antibody discovery is mainly carried out using peripheral memory B cells, and occasionally plasmablasts, that express B cell receptors (BCRs) on their cell surface. Despite the importance of plasma cells (PCs) as the dominant source of circulating antibodies in serum, PCs are rarely utilized because they do not express surface BCRs and cannot be analyzed using antigen-based fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Here, we studied the antibodies encoded by the entire mature B cell populations, including PCs, and compared the antibody repertoires of bone marrow and spleen compartments elicited by immunization in a human immunoglobulin transgenic mouse strain. To circumvent prior technical limitations for analysis of plasma cells, we applied single-cell antibody heavy and light chain gene capture from the entire mature B cell repertoires followed by yeast display functional analysis using a cytokine as a model immunogen. We performed affinity-based sorting of antibody yeast display libraries and large-scale next-generation sequencing analyses to follow antibody lineage performance, with experimental validation of 76 monoclonal antibodies against the cytokine antigen that identified three antibodies with exquisite double-digit picomolar binding affinity. We observed that spleen B cell populations generated higher affinity antibodies compared to bone marrow PCs and that antigen-specific splenic B cells had higher average levels of somatic hypermutation. A degree of clonal overlap was also observed between bone marrow and spleen antibody repertoires, indicating common origins of certain clones across lymphoid compartments. These data demonstrate a new capacity to functionally analyze antigen-specific B cell populations of different lymphoid organs, including PCs, for high-affinity antibody discovery and detailed fundamental studies of antibody immunity.

Cell activation-based screening of natively paired human T cell receptor repertoires.

Adoptive immune therapies based on the transfer of antigen-specific T cells have been used successfully to treat various cancers and viral infections, but improved techniques are needed to identify optimally protective human T cell receptors (TCRs). Here we present a high-throughput approach to the identification of natively paired human TCRα and TCRß (TCRα:ß) genes encoding heterodimeric TCRs that recognize specific peptide antigens bound to major histocompatibility complex molecules (pMHCs). We first captured and cloned TCRα:ß genes from individual cells, ensuring fidelity using a suppression PCR. We then screened TCRα:ß libraries expressed in an immortalized cell line using peptide-pulsed antigen-presenting cells and sequenced activated clones to identify the cognate TCRs. Our results validated an experimental pipeline that allows large-scale repertoire datasets to be annotated with functional specificity information, facilitating the discovery of therapeutically relevant TCRs.

Immortalization and functional screening of natively paired human T cell receptor repertoires.

Functional analyses of the T cell receptor (TCR) landscape can reveal critical information about protection from disease and molecular responses to vaccines. However, it has proven difficult to combine advanced next-generation sequencing technologies with methods to decode the peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) specificity of individual TCRs. We developed a new high-throughput approach to enable repertoire-scale functional evaluations of natively paired TCRs. In particular, we leveraged the immortalized nature of physically linked TCRα:ß amplicon libraries to analyze binding against multiple recombinant pMHCs on a repertoire scale, and to exemplify the utility of this approach, we also performed affinity-based functional mapping in conjunction with quantitative next-generation sequencing to track antigen-specific TCRs. These data successfully validated a new immortalization and screening platform to facilitate detailed molecular analyses of disease-relevant antigen interactions with human TCRs.

Regulatory Approved Monoclonal Antibodies Contain Framework Mutations Predicted From Human Antibody Repertoires.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are an important class of therapeutics used to treat cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases. Identifying highly developable mAb sequences in silico could greatly reduce the time and cost required for therapeutic mAb development. Here, we present position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs) for antibody framework mutations developed using baseline human antibody repertoire sequences. Our analysis shows that human antibody repertoire-based PSSMs are consistent across individuals and demonstrate high correlations between related germlines. We show that mutations in existing therapeutic antibodies can be accurately predicted solely from baseline human antibody sequence data. We find that mAbs developed using humanized mice had more human-like FR mutations than mAbs originally developed by hybridoma technology. A quantitative assessment of entire framework regions of therapeutic antibodies revealed that there may be potential for improving the properties of existing therapeutic antibodies by incorporating additional mutations of high frequency in baseline human antibody repertoires. In addition, high frequency mutations in baseline human antibody repertoires were predicted in silico to reduce immunogenicity in therapeutic mAbs due to the removal of T cell epitopes. Several therapeutic mAbs were identified to have common, universally high-scoring framework mutations, and molecular dynamics simulations revealed the mechanistic basis for the evolutionary selection of these mutations. Our results suggest that baseline human antibody repertoires may be useful as predictive tools to guide mAb development in the future.

Functional Profiling of Antibody Immune Repertoires in Convalescent Zika Virus Disease Patients.

The re-emergence of Zika virus (ZIKV) caused widespread infections that were linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults and congenital malformation in fetuses, and epidemiological data suggest that ZIKV infection can induce protective antibody responses. A more detailed understanding of anti-ZIKV antibody responses may lead to enhanced antibody discovery and improved vaccine designs against ZIKV and related flaviviruses. Here, we applied recently-invented library-scale antibody screening technologies to determine comprehensive functional molecular and genetic profiles of naturally elicited human anti-ZIKV antibodies in three convalescent individuals. We leveraged natively paired antibody yeast display and NGS to predict antibody cross-reactivities and coarse-grain antibody affinities, to perform in-depth immune profiling of IgM, IgG, and IgA antibody repertoires in peripheral blood, and to reveal virus maturation state-dependent antibody interactions. Repertoire-scale comparison of ZIKV VLP-specific and non-specific antibodies in the same individuals also showed that mean antibody somatic hypermutation levels were substantially influenced by donor-intrinsic characteristics. These data provide insights into antiviral antibody responses to ZIKV disease and outline systems-level strategies to track human antibody immune responses to emergent viral infections.