An Interesting Early Observation Concerning Specific Antibody-Producing Hybridomas

In the late 1960s, the authors worked with tetraploid murine lymphoma cell lines that could be propagated in suspension cultures or in the peritoneal cavities of mice, where they grew in ascitic form. They proposed that the tetraploid cells resulted from the fusion of a diploid murine lymphoma cell that produced leukemia virus and an immune splenic plasma cell that produced neutralizing antibodies to the leukemia virus. They produced fused tetraploid cells in the peritoneal cavities of mice inoculated with lymphoma and immune spleen cells. It was suggested that such fusions occur in the natural history of lymphoproliferative diseases. The tetraploid fused cells remained malignant, acquired immunoresistance, and continued the production of antibodies specifically neutralizing the leukemia virus. They did not call the fused cells "hybridomas" and their products 'monoclonal antibodies," but were first to recognize and propose that this type of fusion occurred.