DOCTORS' RESEARCH COULD REVOLUTIONIZE TREATMENT
Author: By Daniel Q. Haney, Associated Press
Date: Tuesday, October 16, 1984
Page: 10
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
The award of the Nobel Prize in Medicine yesterday to the developers of
monoclonal antibodies comes just as their discovery is finding workaday uses
that could revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of diseases from herpes
to cancer.
The beauty of these chemicals is their ability to pinpoint targets inside
the body - germs, particular blood cells, even single cancer cells - so they
can be identified or destroyed.
"I think it's one of the major contributions to biomedical research in the
last 30 years," said Dr. Jack R. Wands of Massachusetts General Hospital.
"It touches all branches of research from basic immunology to clinical
applications such as, potentially, cancer chemotherapy. It's had an enormous
impact and will continue to do so," he said.
Wands is one of the scientists at dozens of universities and hospitals
around the world who are looking for ways to harness these substances to cure
disease.
The Nobel Prize was given to Dr. Georges J. F. Koehler of West Germany and
Dr. Cesar Milstein of Argentina for discovering how to produce monoclonal
antibodies. Dr. Niels Kaj Jerne, a British citizen who works in Switzerland,
was also recognized for basic research into the body's immune defenses.
Antibodies are chemicals produced by blood cells. They latch onto foreign
substances, such as bacteria, and mark them for destruction by other parts of
the immune system. They do this by recognizing specific sites called antigens
that sit on the surface of the invader.
Each cell has millions of different antigens, and the body produces a host
of antibodies, each sensitive to a different site, as it goes about its daily
business of keeping a human healthy.
Isolating one of these antibodies and then manufacturing it in bulk was an
important advance. The result was a pure or monoclonal antibody, which
recognizes only a single antigen. The manufacturing process has now been
applied to a variety of antibodies, and these monoclonal antibodies provide a
handy tool in many different branches of medicine.
They are already finding a practical application in diagnosing diseases. A
major problem of modern medicine is determining what germs are making people
sick. Growing the bugs in cultures can take weeks, so doctors often must guess
which antibiotics will work best.
Monoclonals can be made that will latch onto a telltale antigen that's
possessed by just one germ. Using a blood sample, doctors can now learn in
hours what kind of microbe is causing the illness.
The Food and Drug Administration has already approved more than 60 of
these diagnostic products for marketing.
Among potential uses are antibody tests that will spot herpes simplex
virus, chlamydia, gonorrhea and Legionnaires' disease.
Monoclonals are also used to find cancers in the body that are too small
to be identified any other way and, in some cases, to
kill them.
They are also making bone marrow transplants more practical for people with
leukemia and other diseases.
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