ABSTRACT
In the 10 years since a practical method was described for making monoclonal anti bodies, the technique has been applied in nearly every field of biology and medicine. Monoclonal antibodies have revolutionized some of the areas in which they have been applied, by providing the reagents with which to analyze the underlying phenomena. The outstanding example is cellular immunology, which has seen the concepts of cel lular interactions in the control of immune responses develop in detail and acceptance. The basic concepts existed well before the availability of monoclonal antibodies, but they were based on experiments which were open to criticism because of the lack of specificity of the reagents used. Thus, allo-antisera, used in dissecting cell cooperation in mice, were contaminated with antiviral antibodies, which may or may not have affected the results. In man, experiments on cell cooperation and interaction in the immune response were based on technically difficult in vitro assays which did not re produce well in different laboratories.
