The concept that antibodies may catalyze chemical reactions was first proposed by Linus Pauling in the 40's. He suggested that an enzyme lowers the energy barriers of a reaction by stabilizing preferentially the transition state of the substrate during the reaction rather than the substrate in its ground state.

	Linus Carl Pauling,   American
	chemist,   was   known  for
	his   works   on   organic
	macromolecules   and   on
	chemical   links.
	Nobel Price in Chemistry, 1954
	Nobel Price for Peace, 1962

           Twenty years later, William Jencks has proposed a strategy to prepare new biocatalysts. This strategy was based on the production of antibodies directed against stable molecules resembling the transition state structure of a specific chemical transformation.

           A breakdown in the field came from the development of the monoclonal antibody technique by Köhler and Milstein that has provided the means for producing antibodies with a single antigenic defined specificity.

           If the first report suggesting that antibodies may act as catalysts was published by the group of Bernard Green, the demonstration that antibodies may be tailor-made to catalyze specifically chemical reactions was simultaneously brought by the Californian laboratories of Richard Lerner and Peter Schultz.