The Nation - News from Oct. 17, 1986

A new way to produce large quantities of disease-fighting human antibodies that may be used to treat specific infections or diagnose unknown diseases may be near, researchers at the National Institutes of Health said. Until now, they said, most of these specific antibodies have been derived from mice, which limits their usefulness in the treatment of humans because of possible rejection problems. The scientists said they have developed a method for making the antibodies from white blood cells called B-lymphocytes.