hybridoma
Quick Summary
The technique involves fusing certain myeloma cells (cancerous B cells), which can multiply indefinitely but cannot produce antibodies, with plasma cells (noncancerous B cells), which are short-lived but produce a desired antibody. The resulting hybrid cells, called hybridomas, grow at the rate of myeloma cells but also produce large amounts of the desired antibody. In this way researchers obtain large quantities of antibody molecules that all react against the same antigen.
The essential production steps are shown here. In step 2, HGPRT is hypoxanthineguanine phosphoribosyltransferase, an enzyme that allows cells to grow on a medium containing HAT, or hydroxanthine, aminopterin, and thymidine. As shown in step 4, only hybridomas can live in the HAT medium; unfused myeloma cells, lacking HGPRT, die in the medium, as do unfused plasma cells, which are naturally short-lived.
A hybridoma is a hybrid cell created by fusing an antibody-producing lymphocyte with a tumor cell. This fusion results in a cell that can continuously produce a specific monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibodies are artificial antibodies produced through genetic engineering and are vital in biotechnology. They are derived from a single B cell clone, with each plasma cell secreting identical immunoglobulin molecules.12
Hybridomas are crucial because they allow for the large-scale production of specific monoclonal antibodies, which are otherwise difficult to isolate from the body's natural polyclonal antibody response. These highly specific antibodies are used in various applications, including immunotherapy for diseases like cancer, diagnostic testing, and cell identification.23
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