Production of monoclonal antibodies.

The discovery of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produced by "hybridoma technology" by George Köhler and Cesar Milstein in 1975 has had a great impact both on basic biological research and on clinical medicine. However, this impact was not immediately recognized. It took around 10 years to appreciate the importance of using these mAbs in various fields of science other than immunology, such as cell biology, biochemistry, microbiology, virology, para-sitology, physiology, genetics, and molecular biology; and also in areas of clinical medicine, such as pathology, hematology, oncology, and infectious disease. The contribution of mAbs to science and clinical medicine was recognized in 1984 by the award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Köhler and Milstein.