Past wisdom

摘要

Four decades ago, in August 1975, a short paper on antibodies was published in Nature. The findings spawned a multibillion-dollar drug industry: the monoclonal antibody drugs Herceptin, used to treat breast cancer, and Humira, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, were together worth around US$15.4 billion to the pharmaceutical industry in 2012. But the revolution was nearly stillborn: the published technique to make monoclonal antibodies could not be reproduced. The crisis was such, says historian Lara Marks at Kings College London, that the authors considered withdrawing their article from Nature. It was years before the investigations paid off and the huge medical potential of monoclonal antibodies started to crystallize. "Nowadays it seems prophetic," says Greg Winter, who made the first monoclonal antibody for use in humans. "But at that point I don't think anyone had realized the importance."