Monoclonal antibodies against human solid tumors

Many monoclonal antibodies have been generated against human solid tumors. Very often, animals were immunized with long term culture cell lines, or sometimes with membrane preparations, which were obtained from such cell lines or from chirurgically resected tumors. High precautions must be taken to ensure the specificity of the resulting monoclonal antibodies: especially, it must be confirmed that they do not react with lymphocytes or blood group antigens. Monoclonal antibodies allowed investigators to evidence several new antigens. Some of them are organ specific antigens expressed in the tumoral as well as in the normal tissue, while others really look as tumor associated antigens, though such a feature has to be cautiously claimed. Indeed, these antigenic markers are often recovered in some normal cells. Further, the oncofetal pattern of several of these antigens is to be noticed. Human-mouse hybridomas could allow one to immortalize antibodies raised in cancerous patients against components of their own tumor. However, some difficulties do yet persist in the generation of such cell hybrids and furthermore, their stability is not quite satisfactory.