Monoclonal Antibodies

• Monoclonal antibodies come from a single clone of cells
• • We take a cell
  • Clone it
  • And then make all the clones produce antibodies
• • Antibodies are proteins produced by B-Lymphocytes/B-Cells (white blood cells) that help fight disease by binding onto antigens
• Monoclonal antibodies are normally made in a laboratory
• Making monoclonal antibodies

  • need a lot of B-Lymphocyte clones
  • Don't divide quickly
  • Must combine with fast dividing tumour cells
  • This combination is called a hybridoma
  • They divide rapidly but still produce lots of antibodies
  • Leaving the hybridoma to divide for a while in the petri dish results in an army of hybridoma cells producing identical antibodies
  • Then we can collect the antibodies and purify them
• • we inject an animal with the antigen we want our antibody to bind to
  • the animals immune system will now produce loads of B-Lymphocytes specific to that antigen
  • this means we can easily isolate the b-cells and combine them with our tumour cells
• • monoclonal antibodies always bind to one specific thing
  • by using the right B-lymphocyte we can create antibodies that bind to anything we want
  • we can make them bind to proteins or cells, or harmful pathogens and chemicals
  • we can attach things to antibodies (drugs, fluorescent proteins, radioactive material)
  • so if we created monoclonal antibodies that binded to cancer cells with radioactive material attached, we could locate cancer cells and destroy them.
• Specific monoclonal antibodies bind to specific antigens during the treatment of cancer.