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César Milstein was born in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, in 1927. He graduated from Buenos Aires University and obtained a PhD under Professor Stoppani (Professor of Biochemistry) in the Medical School on kinetic studies with the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase. In 1958, funded by the British Council, he joined the Biochemistry Department in Cambridge to work for a PhD under Malcolm Dixon on the mechanism of metal activation of the enzyme phosphoglucomutase. During this work he collaborated with Fred Sanger whose group he joined with a short-term Medical Research Council appointment. He returned to Argentina for two years during which he extended his studies of mechanisms of enzyme action to the enzymes phosphoglyceromutase and alkaline phosphatase. However, the political persecution of liberal intellectuals and scientists manifested itself as a vendetta against the director of the institute where he was working, forcing him to resign and return to Cambridge and rejoin Sanger who was now Head of the Division of Protein Chemistry in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He followed the advice of Sanger and changed his field of study from enzymes to antibodies. |
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 Production of Monoclonal Antibodies. |
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The First Hybridoma |
In 1975, Milstein and Köhler described the hybridoma technique for producing monoclonal antibodies. They immortalised antibody producing cells by fusing them with tumour cells. The resulting antibody cell and all its daughter cells produce identical antibody molecules. The method allows unlimited production of monoclonal antibodies with predetermined specificity. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975 and became a Companion of Honour in 1995. Cesar Milstein died in March 2002 in Cambridge aged 74. César Milstein 1927-2002  |
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