The relative merits of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies in enzyme immunoassays

The relative merits of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies in enzyme immunoassays 

A clone of B cells produces antibody of only one specificity i.e. 

The strategy of the immune system to produce polyclonal antibodies yields two important bonus effects, i.e. the affinity bonus (or avidity) and the specificity bonus , both of which are eliminated by cloning (Sections 8.4 to 8.6). The specificity of monoclonal antibodies may sometimes prove to be not as high as expected. Some may cross-react, and this cross-reactivity cannot, in contrast to polyclonal antisera, be removed with immunosorbents (Brodsky et al., 1979). A monoclonal antibody is unable to distinguish different antigens if they bear the same epitope. For example, Bundesen et al. (1980) encountered this problem with a peptide sequence common to several hormones. Kurstak et al. (1983) emphasized problems with monoclonal reagents in virus diagnosis. 

Monoclonal antibody production is time consuming, particularly for weak immunogens which require many fusion experiments to 

A general comparison of monoclonal antibodies and polyclonal antisera is given in Table 5.2. The lower avidity bonus (Section 8.5) of monoclonal antibodies and the small fraction of high-affinity 

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