HAB-1, a new heteromyeloma for continuous production of human monoclonal antibodies.

To obtain suitable cell lines for the immortalisation of human lymphocytes, we constructed a heteromyeloma between the murine myeloma Ag8 and human lymphocytes from a highly malignant polymorphic, centroblastic B-cell lymphoma. The thioguanine-resistant and HAT-sensitive heteromyeloma HAB-1 neither secretes nor contains cytoplasmatic immunoglobulins, the cells being EBV negative but positively stained for HLA-BC and the human proliferation marker Ki-67. The karyotype consists of about 50 murine and 20 human chromosomes. The HAB-1 cells grow in suspension and have a doubling rate of about 25-30 h. In fusion experiments with spleen cells from stomach carcinoma patients HAB-1 cells show a 5-7 times higher fusion efficiency than murine Ag8 cells or another heteromyeloma SPM4-0 and give stable antibody producing products. The cell line will be made available to interested scientists.