Production of Monoclonal Antibodies in Horses

Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) have been successfully used to evaluate immune responses in horses, and to target important antigens of equine infectious agents to which protective immune responses may be directed (1 –5 ). Most of these studies are performed with murine MAb produced by fusing spleen cells from immunized mice with an appropriate myeloma cell line, as described in Chapter 3 . However, there are experimental questions for which murine MAb are not adequate. These include:

1.	Definition of microbial epitopes recognized by the infected host;
2.	Identification of immunodominant epitopes for the microbe under investigation; and
3.	Determination of neutralization-sensitive epitopes.