What are the advantages of monoclonal antibodies compared with polyclonal antibodies?

Correct selection and application according to the requirements of different application fields.

1. Advantages of monoclonal antibodies:

Hybridoma (1) can "permanently" survive in vitro and be passaged. As long as the cell line does not undergo gene mutation, it can continuously produce antibodies with high specificity and uniformity.

(2) A large number of highly specific and uniform antibodies can be obtained from relatively impure antigens.

(3) Because we can obtain "infinite" homologous antibodies, it is suitable for immunological analysis methods characterized by labeled antibodies, such as IRMA and ELISA.

(4) Monoclonal antibodies can be used for radioimmunoimaging and immunotherapy in vivo because of their high specificity and single biological function.

2. Limitations of monoclonal antibodies:

The immobilized affinity and limited biological activity of (1) monoclonal antibody limit its application range. Because monoclonal antibodies can not carry out precipitation and agglutination reactions, many detection methods can not be completed by monoclonal antibodies.

(2) The reaction intensity of monoclonal antibody is not as strong as that of polyclonal antibody.

(3) The preparation process is complicated, time-consuming and laborious, so the price of monoclonal antibody is also high.