Production and properties of monoclonal antibodies to guinea pig Ia antigens.

Although the use of monoclonal antibodies to characterize the Ia antigen system is still in its infancy, the usefulness of this approach is clearly apparent. Since xenogeneic immunization can be used to generate these antibodies, the chances are good that a greater variety of Ia types and determinants will be detected compared to those detected with conventional alloantisera. In addition, the advantages of unlimited quantity and constant specificity allow a much greater degree of standardization than was previously possible. Finally, monoclonal antibodies open up lines of investigation, such as the examination of correlations between the monoclonal antibody's inhibition of T-cell proliferation and the antibody's corresponding Ia epitope-binding characteristics, that it would be impossible to approach using conventional alloantisera.