How to identify plasma cells that only produce monoclonal antibodies?

Question

I am studying the procedures of forming hybridoma cells for generating a large number of monoclonal antibodies.
Before the procedure of fusion (with multiple myeloma cells) happens, I would like to ask how to ensure all the plasma cells in the cell extract only contains those which produce monoclonal antibodies only but not polyclonal antibodies?
I have searched in Wiki, and it says

identifying antigen-specific plasma/plasmablast cells (ASPC) that produce antibodies specific to an antigen of interest

I would like to ask what methods are available for us to do this identification?
Thank you.

Chris · Accepted Answer

You don't do this before the fusion, you do it afterwards. First you make the hybridoma cells, which are then seeded as single cells into multiwell plates and cultivated to get enough cells for testing and further culture. This way you get only one antibody type produced per well (which is coming from a single clone, hence it is monoclonal) which then can be isolated and tested for antigen specificity.
For a schematic see the image from this publication:

How to identify plasma cells that only produce monoclonal antibodies?

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