title: Monoclonal antibodies and the transformation of blood typing.
abstract: Today, when monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have become one of the most important classes of therapeutic drugs, it is easy to forget how much they have transformed our healthcare in other ways. One of the first clinical areas, as this paper shows, where mAbs made their mark was in the field of blood typing. The adoption of mAbs for this purpose was done with little public fanfare or funding. Nonetheless, it radically transformed the accuracy and cost of blood typing and shifted the procedure away from a dependence on reagents made from human blood donated by volunteers. This paper argues that the development of mAbs as reagents for blood typing laid the foundation for the first large-scale production of mAbs thereby paving the way to the advent of mAb diagnostics and therapeutics.
authors.affiliation: a King's College ; London , UK.
authors.forename: Lara
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marks
mesh_terms: D000017:ABO Blood-Group System; D000372:Agglutination Tests / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000276:immunology*; D001788:Blood Grouping and Crossmatching / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D008951:MNSs Blood-Group System; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012204:Rh-Hr Blood-Group System
chemical_list: D000017:ABO Blood-Group System; D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal; D008951:MNSs Blood-Group System; D012204:Rh-Hr Blood-Group System
keywords: FDA, Food and Drug Administration; LMB, Laboratory of Molecular Biology; MRC, (British) Medical Research Council; NHS, (British) National Health Service; PC, Personal communication; RH, Rhesus; blood typing; mAb, monoclonal; manufacturing; monoclonal; production