Neonatal tolerance increases efficacy of antisera production

In this investigation we demonstrate that neonatal tolerance can be used to increase the specificity of antisera. We have shown that if mice are immunized with a human B cell line then the antisera they produce also reacts strongly with human T cells. However, if the mice are first neonatally tolerized to a human T cell line and then immunized with the B cell line the antisera becomes much more specific for the B cell line. In theory this approach, of initially tolerizing the animal to uninteresting antigens, may also make it possible to produce monoclonal antibodies to rare cellular determinants more efficiently.