News

Way back at the beginning of the mAb story (#71), one of their first uses in infectious disease surveillance was to to identify novel influenza viruses. When mice were immunised with, say, the highly variable influenza hemagglutinin (HA) protein (#46) the next step was now (rather than taking blood to separate polyclonal immune serum) to ‘immortalise’ antibody producing B cells by making  hybridoma cell lines, each of which produced a single, monospecific IgG (#21). These very precise reagents could then be used to type HA-different (#19, #20) flu strains. My other (after Rolf Zinkernagel, #32) Swiss research collaborator, Walter Gerhard at The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, was the first in that field, where he worked with the world’s leading avian influenza virologist and another close colleague, New Zealander Rob Webster, who started the WHO Collaborating Centre for Studying the Ecology of Influenza in Animals at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis. The other five WHO Collaborating Centres for Influenza all focus on the disease in humans, with the Doherty Institute hosting the Melbourne branch led by Kanta Subbarao.