El desarrollo de reactivos hemoclasificadores mediante la aplicación de la tecnología para la producción de anticuerpos monoclonales (AcMo) ha sido exitoso y ello ha permitido reducir los costos asociados a su producción. En Venezuela el consumo de estos reactivos depende principalmente de la importación, con el consecuente gasto de divisas. Con el propósito de ayudar a solventar esta situación el presente trabajo se planteó como objetivos: 1) Generar hibridomas productores de AcMo con especificidad anti-A y anti-B, 2) Caracterizar y producir a mediana escala los AcMo obtenidos, 3) Realizar estudios de campo, con el fin de lograr su certificación como reactivos hemoclasificadores. El producto de este trabajo fue la obtención de 22 hibridomas, 11 productores de AcMo anti-A y 11 productores de anti-B. Cuatro AcMo fueron caracterizados y estudiados: Au18Kt3F, MG3 (ambos IgM anti-A), SS4.5 (IgG anti-B) y BB2-3 (IgM anti-B). Para la producción de estos AcMo a mayor escala se emplearon los bio-reactores comerciales “miniPerm” y “Tecnomouse”, lográndose una concentración elevada de los mismos. Los valores de parámetros funcionales como avidez, potencia y especificidad de los AcMo producidos resultaron aceptables al compararse con hemoclasificadores comerciales, lo que hace viable su utilización como reactivos hemoclasificadores.

The Monoclonal Antibody (MoAb) technology has been successfully applied to develop reagents for human blood group classification. There is no production of this kind of reagents in Venezuela, and the local demand (blood banks and clinical laboratories) is mainly supplied with imported material. Considering this we decided to apply MoAb techniques to generate murine hybridomas secreting anti-A or anti-B specific MoAb. MoAb obtained were characterized and produced in enough quantity to perform validation studies as blood typing reagents. Out of 22 hybridomas that were initially selected, 11 were anti-A secretors and 11 were anti-B secretors. Four MoAb were further characterized: Au18Kt3F, MG3 (both IgM anti-A), SS4.5 (IgG1 anti-B) and BB2-3 (IgM anti-B). Conditions were also established for growing the hybridomas Au18Kt3F and BB2-3 in the bioreactors “miniPerm” and “Tecnomouse”, allowing for scale-up production of these MoAb. Avidity and specificity were estimated for each one, and the results were comparable to those obtained from commercially available reagents, making feasible its use as blood typing reagents.

The Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas (IVIC) is a government-funded multidisciplinary academic institution dedicated to research, development and technology in many areas of knowledge. Biomedical projects and publications comprise about 40% of the total at IVIC. In this article, we present an overview of some selected research and development projects conducted at IVIC which we believe contain new and important aspects related to malaria, ancylostomiasis, dengue fever, leishmaniasis and tuberculosis. Other projects considered of interest in the general area of tropical medicine are briefly described. This article was prepared as a small contribution to honor and commemorate the centenary of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.