Malignant hybridoma cell lines

Cell Fusion Unlike antibody-secreting cells, myeloma cells, malignant tumor cells of the immune system, can be cultured continuously. Kohler and Milstein (1975) developed a method to fuse (hybridize) B-lymphocytes from the mouse spleen with mouse myeloma cells, so that the fused cell, hybrid-myeloma (or hybridoma) cell, can have the characteristic of the both cell lines that is, the production of specific antibodies and the immortality. Since the hybridoma is derived from a single B-lymphocyte, it produces only one kind of antibody, thus a monoclonal antibody. 

Hybridomas (or fused cell culture lines) are produced by fusing lymphocytes isolated from the spleen of an immunized animal with the HPRT deficient malignant plasma cells. The lymphocytes. The unfused cells die, since spleen cells survive only a few days, while the malignant plasma cells lack HPRT. Fused cells, however, are HPRT positive as well as immortal these hybridomas, or hybrid cells, retain the Ab-producing characteristics of the spleen cells. Hybrid cell lines that produce a specific antibody are then cloned from the single cells and cultured. Each clone created in this manner produces antibodies of a single epitope specificity ... 

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