Clinical applications of monoclonal antibodies

Monoclonal antibodies offer many distinct advantages over conventional antisera, the most obvious being their precise specificity for a single epitope on a single antigen and their potentially unlimited supply. The quantity and purity of available antibodies facilitates antigen purification by affinity chromatography. Monoclonal antibodies can also be used to characterize different parts of a macromolecule with regard to antigenicity, functional activity or genetic variability. Here Andrew McMichael and Judy Bastin concentrate on the potential value of monoclonal antibodies in clinical medicine, surveying papers published up to June 1980, and a number of preprints and personal communications, kindly made available to them by colleagues.