Monoclonal antibody against human IFN-γ

Abstract

Monoclonal antibodies have proved extremely useful for the unambiguous identification, quantification and large-scale purification of a given antigen or a specific epitope. As they are highly specific for a given antigenic determinant, these antibodies are superior to conventional polyclonal antibodies. Since the discovery¹ that mouse spleen B lymphocytes can be fused with mouse B-myeloma cells to yield hybrid cells (hybridomas) secreting specific antibodies derived from the spleen cell fusion partner, several modifications of this method have been used to improve the yield of surviving antibody-secreting hybridomas. We have now included, 5 days after the fusion proceedure, an additional step which stabilizes the hybrids against gene loss and improves growth conditions. We report here that, using this method, we have established several stable mouse hybridoma lines secreting monoclonal antibodies to human γ-interferon (HuIFN-γ).