[Monoclonal antibodies and their potential application to medicine]

Monoclonal antibodies have been increasingly applied in medicine for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes instead of conventional antisera. In addition to their unlimited availability monoclonal antibodies have the advantage of defined specificity, affinity and of standard parameters. This paper describes the production of monoclonal antibodies using the hybridoma technique and surveys some potential fields of application such as infections, transplantations, tumours and lung diseases.