In 1975, by fusing a myeloma cell to a B cell, Cesar Milstein and Georges Kohler succeeded in producing a hybridoma that can be cultured indefinitely in vitro and produces an unlimited number of monoclonal antibodies of known antigenic specificity (4). However, most of these myeloma cells produce antibodies of unknown specificities. Since the malignant B cells are derived from a single clone, they are identical and produce only a single type of antibody ( i.e., a monoclonal antibody, or mAb). B cells in these patients have become malignant and grow uncontrollably. In 1847, Henry Bence-Jones discovered that patients with multiple myeloma, a lymphoid tumor, produced a large quantity of antibodies (3). To overcome the inability of B cells to survive in culture, one approach is to prepare a myeloma-B cell hybridoma. However, like most normal untransformed cells, B cells do not survive in long-term culture. Another approach is to isolate individual antibody-producing B cells and expand them in culture. This method is tedious and frequently unable to completely remove the unwanted antibodies. One is by absorbing the unwanted antibodies by passing the antiserum through a chromatography column of immobilized antigens (2). Several approaches have been taken to overcome the specificity issue of polyclonal antisera. Therefore, this antiserum will not be useful for distinguishing between bovine and human serum albumins. Because bovine serum albumin shares some epitopes with human serum albumin in evolutionarily conserved regions of the protein, this anti-bovine serum albumin antiserum will also react with human serum albumin. The result is a mixture of antibodies in the antiserum. For example, when bovine serum albumin is used to immunize an animal, B cells with different surface Ig will respond to different antigenic determinants on bovine serum albumin. While polyclonal antibodies are powerful tools for identifying biological molecules, there is one important limitation - they are unable to distinguish between antigens that share antigenic determinants. Polyclonal antibodies are defined as a collection of antibodies directed against different antigenic determinants of an antigen or several antigens (1). ![]() Griffith 1,2,3,4ġ Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology Graduate Program, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455Ģ Center for Immunology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455ģ Department of Urology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455Ĥ Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 Sjaastad 1,2, Whitney Swanson 2,3, and Thomas S.
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