[Application of cell engineering techniques for medical science].

The characteristics of the medical science is always fresh utilizing and applying newest techniques developed in the surrounding scientific fields at each time. The molecular biology developed after the 2nd world war has given so great impacts that some technological problems in the medical science have been broken through and many excellent new findings in molecular level have been taken. The most important technique is the culture of somatic cells from human body and the cell biology in vitro was followed by the development of a lot of cell engineering techniques which was quite effective to the research for medical science. Cell fusion is one of the cell engineering techniques. I would like to talk about the 3 kinds of results which have been open corresponding to the cell fusion. I. Gene complementation test became possible among families of a hereditary disease by this technique which was the daybreak of the genetic analyses of human hereditary diseases in laboratories. For a example, 10 complementation groups have been detected in xeroderma pigmentosum which is a recessive hereditary disease showing deficiency in excision repair of damaged DNA. The next step is the isolation of the gene relating to each complementation group. Recently, a gene corresponding to the complementation group A has been isolated in my lab. II. As well known, formation of hybridomas producing monoclonal antibodies has given a great impact to cell biology, diagnosis of some diseases and the treatment of cancers.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)