Monoclonal antibodies search out disease

Abstract

When monoclonal antibodies were first developed just over ten years ago, the inventors had no idea how useful they would be. Even five years ago few could have predicted the explosion in monoclonal technology that is now taking place. This is partly illustrated by the fact that Dr Cesar Milstein and Dr Georges Kohler, inventors of the technology, were not awarded a Nobel prize for their work until 1984, nine years after the event. Now laboratories and commercial companies are making up for lost time. The particular qualities that monoclonal antibodies (MABs) possess are revolutionising the fields of diagnostics and purification, and every day inventive researchers are finding more ways of using them, for example, in cancer therapy. Antibodies are normally made by white blood cells or lymphocytes and act like the immune defences' alarm system. They are large molecules designed to recognise foreign material in our bodies and, when they encounter something like bacteria, they notify the rest of the immune system that there is an intruder.