On 23 Sep 1995, Joy Abramson wrote:
> I'm a student, and I'm doing an assignment on the topic of "Cytology -
> methods of cell study -- Monoclonal Antibodies".. If anybody could tell
> me what these are, how they are used as a method of cell study, books
> that would have the information I need, web sites, or anything else that
> you think would be helpful, it would be very very very VERY much
> appreciated. :)..
>> -Joy Abramson
>Joy,
Monoclonal antibodies are antibodies that have a single specificity.
This is because they are secreted by plasma cells that are all derived
from a single clone (hence the name). The importance of this is that
the antibodies are very specific in their recognition of antigens, and
do not suffer from the problems of cross reactivity seen when one uses
antisera, which will necessarily also react to whatever else the host
animal that was used to raise the antibody in has seen. Monoclonal
antibodies can be produced to essentially anything that you can get
a mouse, rat, hamster, or human to react to immunologically to.
As far as usefullness for cell study, they allow the identification of
populations of cells that have unique antigenic markers on them--
for example, the numbers of CD4+ and CD8+ cells circulating in a
patient's blood are determined by using monoclonal antibodies to the
CD4 and CD8 antigens. Many tumour cells can also be detected by the
presence (or abscence) of particular antigenic markers on their surfaces.
Monoclonal antibodies are also used extensively to detect the presence of
viruses in tissues.
The initial report of the production of monoclonal antibodies can be found
in:
Kohler, G. and C. Millstein. 1975. "Continuous cultures of fused cells
secreting antibody of predefined specificity." Nature, 256:495-497.
A less technical review of monoclonals was written by Cesar Millstein for
Scientific American, and may be more usefull to you:
Millstein, C. 1980. "Monoclonal Antibodies." Scientific American, 243:66-74.
Hope the info helps, and good luck.
Peter Charles, PhD
Department of Pathology (Neuropathology)
Albert Einstein College of Medicine