Preferential generation of monoclonal IgG-producing hybridomas by use of vesicular stomatitis virus-mediated cell fusion.

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)-mediated cell fusion was recently proposed as an alternative fusion technique to generate monoclonal antibody (MAb)-producing hybridomas. In order to further examine this technique, we made direct comparative experiments among VSV, Sendai virus (SV) and polyethylene glycol (PEG)-mediated cell fusion in generating MAb-producing hybridomas. The distribution of immunoglobulin (Ig) isotypes secreted by the hybridomas obtained, as well as hybridoma yield and specific hybridoma yield, was compared. The results show that VSV-fusion yielded almost the same number of specific hybridomas as SV- and PEG-fusion in spite of its lower fusion frequency. In addition, VSV-fusion preferentially gave Ig-producing, especially IgG-producing, hybridomas. SV-fusion yielded both hybridomas and specific hybridomas with similar frequency to PEG-fusion, but IgM-producers predominated. These results demonstrate that fusion method has a considerable influence on the isotypes of obtained antibodies, and also suggest an advantage of VSV-fusion for production of IgG monoclonal antibodies.