Antibodies | Interview with the Authors of an Editor’s Choice Review—Dr. Paul Leonard and Victoria Sherwood
Dr. Paul Leonard and Ms. Victoria Sherwood are co-authors of the Editor’s Choice review “From Single Cells to Silicon: Emerging Technologies Transforming Monoclonal Antibody Discovery”, published in Antibodies (ISSN 2073-4468).
The following is an interview with Dr. Paul Leonard and Victoria Sherwood:
1. Can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?
Victoria: My name is Victoria and I am a PhD researcher at Dublin City University, Ireland. I started my PhD in December last year. My background is in biology and biotherapeutics, and my main research interests are antibody discovery and the development of technologies to improve how we identify and characterise antibodies.
I became particularly interested in antibody discovery during my master’s research, where I gained hands-on experience with recombinant antibody generation and phage display. That experience made me appreciate both the strengths of traditional discovery methods and newer approaches for analysing single cells and antibody sequences. It also highlighted how technologies like microfluidics, sequencing, and computational analysis can be integrated with traditional methods.
Paul: I am Paul Leonard, an Associate Professor in the School of Biotechnology at Dublin City University. My research group works in the area of antibody discovery and engineering, with a particular focus on recombinant antibodies. We have a lot of experience using single-cell approaches for antibody discovery in diagnostics and other applications, including therapeutics.
From a practical perspective, our interest in antibody discovery is driven by the goal of finding antibodies that work for a defined purpose. In other words, they need to have a functional aspect, and that is one of the main reasons we were interested in writing this review.
2. Can you summarise the main findings of your review and its most important message?
Paul: For us, it was the convergence of in silico discovery and AI combined with high-throughput single-cell analysis to improve the quality of antibody discovery. We have seen a lot of papers looking at new AI-powered approaches for antibody discovery, but we are particularly interested in combining these methods into one single workflow and improving the quality of the discovery process.
The main message from our paper is the importance of function-first discovery. We argue that combining physical single-cell analysis and sequencing-based discovery in combination with AI tools can improve data generation. We mention in our review the idea of a closed loop. In this approach, one component informs and strengthens another, which in turn feeds back into the original component. The goal is to ensure that the information generated is analysed in the most effective way so that, ultimately, we can obtain better-quality antibodies.
3. Which emerging technologies or research directions in monoclonal antibody discovery do you think will become most important in the coming years?
Victoria: I think AI has enormous potential, but we have to be realistic on where it currently stands. Computational models can predict structures, analyse sequences, identify patterns within large datasets, and potentially optimise or prioritise antibody candidates that can help reduce the search for researchers. However, that is not the same as demonstrating that an antibody has the required biological functions. AI is going to be great as an accelerator and prioritisation tool rather than as a replacement for physical laboratory work. The key is the workflow between the two.
Paul: For me, the future is going to be in that combination. It’s the connection between high-throughput sequencing and single-cell analysis, where you obtain the paired heavy and light chains, and AI tools along the whole workflow. These tools can be applied not only for understanding sequence diversity and convergence, but also to surface binding predictions and affinity maturation predictions. At the moment, many of these approaches are quite separate and the training sets available for them are quite limited. As we have better quality information for these training sets, including 3D structures of antibody sequences with their targets, the key will be connecting these different approaches.
What we tried to do in our review was to highlight some of the approaches in each area so that researchers could map out a workflow and bring in the appropriate tools at the right time. The aim is to harmonise the workflow to use the right quality data at the right time to obtain the right answer.
If there was one single technology that solved every problem, we would all be using it. The reality is that there are many different and great technologies. Some offer very high throughput but are more limited in the types of questions they can address. Others have strong functional discovery capabilities but may be more limited in recovery or other aspects. Perhaps the biggest challenge for an antibody discovery scientist is understanding the right question being asked. Different biological questions may require different assay approaches and different tools. The goal is to use the most appropriate approach to ensure that you obtain the antibody with the right attributes for your particular application.
4. What is your opinion on open access publishing, and how do you believe it impacts scientific progress?
Paul: For us, it is about research democratisation. We want research to be accessible to everybody, at all levels and with all budgets.
Our priority is to make sure that it is an open readership, so that everyone, from researchers who are just starting out in this area to those who are well established, can access the work.
For us, it is a high priority to make sure that our research, or in this case, our review of the state of the art, reaches the general population without restrictions.
5. How was your experience publishing with Antibodies?
Paul: Sometimes the best validation is to ask the question: would you publish there again? For us, the answer is absolutely yes.
The publication process was very straightforward, with a quick peer review and an efficient submission portal. We also find that Antibodies focuses on the topics we are more interested in.
Another key reason is that the journal allows us to reach the readership we want. For those reasons, we would certainly look to publish with Antibodies again.