Rat hybridoma technology: culturing of rat myeloma cell line IR983F prior to cell fusion.
The nonsecreting IR983F rat myeloma cell line grew exponentially with a mean generation time of 16 h when reset daily at 5 X 10(5) cells/ml in culture medium with horse serum. High yields of rat-rat hybrids were systematically obtained when fusing exponentially growing IR983F cells with syngeneic immune spleen cells. The yields of hybrids secreting specific antibodies varied greatly according to the immunisation procedure. In the best conditions, 22 hybrids secreting anti-human leukocyte antibodies were recovered per 10(7) plated cells.