The purpose of the present invention is to provide, as a platform technique that may serve as preparation for pandemics, a rapid
antibody production technique in which a non-
human animal having a human
antibody gene is used. More specifically, the purpose of the present invention is to provide an immunization method with which it is possible to induce, in a short period of time, a high
antigen-
binding ability of an
antibody or a high
antibody titer of an
antiserum, and a method for producing a human antibody /
antiserum with which it is possible to rapidly produce a wide range of neutralizing antibodies. (1) An immunization method for rapidly inducing a human
monoclonal antibody having a
high ability to bind to a desired
antigen or a human polyclonal antibody having a high
antibody titer, the method comprising a step for immunizing a non-
human animal a plurality of times with a desired
antigen or a
nucleic acid encoding the antigen within 30 days from the first immunization, the non-
human animal having a human antibody
gene or locus, and the non-human animal being such that an endogenous
gene or locus of the non-human animal corresponding to the human antibody gene or locus is disrupted or deleted, or mutated so as to result in a loss of expression or low expression. (2) A method for producing a human antibody against a desired antigen using a non-human animal, the method comprising: an immunization step for immunizing the non-human animal with the antigen or a
nucleic acid encoding the antigen; a
human immunoglobulin-positive
B cell isolation step for isolating B cells that are
human immunoglobulin-positive from a tissue of the immunized non-human animal; an antibody
base sequence acquisition step for acquiring the base sequences of antibody light-chain mRNA-derived cDNA and antibody heavy-chain mRNA-derived cDNA prepared from the isolated B cells; and an
antibody production step for producing an antibody on the basis of the acquired antibody
base sequence, the non-h