Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2007 Dec;18(6):523-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2007.10.011. Epub 2007 Dec 11.

Human monoclonal antibodies by immortalization of memory B cells

Antonio Lanzavecchia  1 , Davide Corti, Federica Sallusto
Affiliations
Review

Human monoclonal antibodies by immortalization of memory B cells

Antonio Lanzavecchia et al. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2007 Dec.

Abstract

The administration of hyper immune sera to prevent or treat life-threatening infections is a remarkable milestone in medicine and biotechnology that has been achieved more than a century ago. Yet, the therapeutic use of monoclonal antibodies in this field has developed slowly over the last decades. Here we compare and contrast current methods to generate human monoclonal antibodies and highlight the advantages of exploiting the human antibody repertoire using a novel method that allows efficient immortalization and cloning of human memory B cells. This method, which has been successfully applied to isolate broadly neutralizing antibodies against SARS and H5N1 influenza viruses, is expected to accelerate the development of therapeutics in the field of infectious diseases not only by providing neutralizing antibodies for passive serotherapy, but also by generating relevant information for vaccine design.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
An improved method for immortalization of human memory B cells [31••].
Figure 2
Figure 2
A schematic view of the analytic vaccinology approach and ongoing projects in the authors’ laboratory. Modified from Burton et al. [38].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Behring, Kitasato [On the development of immunity to diphtheria and tetanus in animals] Dtsch Med Wochenschr. 1965;90:2183. - PubMed
    1. Keller M.A., Stiehm E.R. Passive immunity in prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2000;13:602–614. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Casadevall A., Dadachova E., Pirofski L.A. Passive antibody therapy for infectious diseases. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2004;2:695–703. - PubMed
    1. Johnson S., Oliver C., Prince G.A., Hemming V.G., Pfarr D.S., Wang S.C., Dormitzer M., O’Grady J., Koenig S., Tamura J.K. Development of a humanized monoclonal antibody (MEDI-493) with potent in vitro and in vivo activity against respiratory syncytial virus. J Infect Dis. 1997;176:1215–1224. - PubMed
    1. Feldmann M., Maini R.N. Anti-TNF alpha therapy of rheumatoid arthritis: what have we learned? Annu Rev Immunol. 2001;19:163–196. - PubMed

MeSH terms

Substances