Monoclonal and recombinant antibodies, 30 years after

In 1975, the hybridoma technology provided, for the first time, an access to murine monoclonal antibodies. During the two following decades, their high potential, as laboratory tools, was rapidly exploited, but in vivo applications were still very limited. Nowadays, antibodies, omnipresent in both diagnostic and research domains, are largely invading the domain of therapy. A wide array of novel technologies, including phage display and transgenic mice, to isolate fully human antibodies and engineer these molecules, has been implemented. The natural propensity, of the antibody molecules, to metamorphosis makes them an ideal response to new applications and therapeutic challenges. The present review is a tentative update of the different antibody "formats" and a walk through the techniques recently applied to antibody engineering. In addition it also addresses some specific issues such as the development of expression systems suitable for large-scale production of recombinant antibodies.