Selection of Pichia pastoris strains expressing recombinant immunoglobulin G by cell surface labeling

A simple cell labeling method for sorting yeast Pichia pastoris antibody expressing strains is described. A small portion of secreted recombinant antibody retained on the cell surface was labeled with fluorescence detection antibody. The signal intensity of the labeled cell was correlated with the cell's antibody productivity. Using this labeling technique to sort a mixture model induced in the same fermenter where the cells of high producing strain were spiked into a population of a low producing strain at the frequency of 1:100,000, one round of sorting achieved a ∼ 5000-fold enrichment of the high producing strain. A variety of P. pastoris strains expressing antibody sorted based on the signal intensity on the cell surface yielded titer improvements by 30% to 300%. Our data demonstrate that Pichia cell surface labeling is a simple, effective and reliable method for sorting Pichia antibody expressing strains for productivity improvement.