Legends Of Allergy/Immunology: Georges Kohler And The Discovery Of Monoclonal Antibodies

If you watch Georges Köhler's 1984 Nobel lecture on monoclonal antibodies (mAb) you hear a lot about myelomas, cell fusion, hybridomas, transgenetics, chain loss, insertions, deletions, heavy chain toxicity, allelic exclusion and very little on mAbs.This should not come as a surprise, because as a basic scientist Georges Köhler's ambition was to understand the assembly of heavy and light chains to form a specific antibody and not specifically to generate mAbs. This does not mean the discovery of mAbs was accidental. Instead, it was a byproduct of excellent scientific thinking and the work of three men, Georges Köhler, César Milstein and Nils Kaj Jerne, connected by their interest in the generation of antibody specificity and diversity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.