30 Aug 2021
Setting it Straight: The monoclonal antibody story 3: Fund smart people for solutions and economic benefit
Once Kohler and Milstein had produced their first antigen-specific hybridomas, a next step was to subclone (#71) the myeloma fusion partner (for antigen-specific B cells) and clean up the act by getting rid of the irrelevant antibody (Igs) from the tumour line. That proved easy. Myelomas soon lose the capacity to make the Ig heavy (H) chains, then light (L) chains that combine to form the two identical arms of the Y-shaped IgG molecule (#20). They soon had a spectrum of ‘immortalised hybridoma’ lines, each pumping-out loads of a single IgG molecule encoded by the DNA of just one antigen-specific B cell.