Production of Antibody to Sheep Red Blood Cells by Human Tonsil Cells in vitro

Abstract

TWO types of lymphocyte cooperate in initiating the humoral response to antigen: the B cell is the progenitor of antibody-forming cells and the T cell acts in a helper capacity. The activity of a third cell, the macrophage, is also required. Although the functions of B and T cells are antigen-specific, that of the macrophage is not. Most knowledge about the kinetics and distribution of the two types of lymphocytes, their specificity, and their susceptibility to inhibition or stimulation, has been established by experiments with mice. Progress has been facilitated in particular by the development of methods that measure the response of mouse spleen cells to antigen in vitro; we report here some experiments with human lymphocytes from blood and tonsils, the two sources of such cells most readily available.