Monoclonal hybridoma antibodies in human melanoma: current status.

The advent of hybridoma monoclonal antibody technology has opened a new frontier in the biomedical sciences. Human tumor biology and immunology are fields that should particularly benefit from its application. Many advances already have been made in the definition of human melanoma-associated antigens. Most work has been done using mouse monoclonal antibodies, but it now appears that the production of human monoclonal antibodies against human tumor antigens is an achievable goal. Mouse and human monoclonal antibodies should provide us with the reagents to catalogue and characterize both biochemically and functionally the entire range of molecules associated with human melanoma cells. These same reagents will be essential to the development of immunodiagnostic and immunoprognostic assays, and also may be used in the future as highly specific probes for the delivery of radioisotopes, chemotherapeutic agents, and toxins to metastatic tumor deposits.