In Vitro Expansion of Human B Cells for the Production of Human Monoclonal Antibodies

Early work from a number of laboratories has demonstrated the low frequency with which peripheral human B cells secreting specific monoclonal antibodies can be rescued by cell fusion (Olsson et al., 1983; Kozbor and Roder, 1983b, 1984). Use of spleen and lymph node tissue only marginally improved these results. The development of new human fusion partners (Larrick et al.,1983; Glassy et al., 1983; Kozbor and Roder, 1983; Chiorazzi et al., 1982; Abrams et al., 1983), mouse—human heteromyeloma cell lines (Teng et al., 1983), mouse—human fusion partners (Kozbor and Roder, 1984, 1983b), and optimization of fusion protocols (Buck et al., 1984; Truitt et al., 1984) has slightly increased the frequency of specific antibodies, but the efficiency is still far less than that of immunized mice or rats. Even with a greater understanding of the postimmunization kinetics of immune B-cell precursors in peripheral human blood (Callard et al., 1982; Butler et al.,1983; Astaldi et al., 1982), production of antibody-producing human hybridomas is still an uncommon event.