MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES FOR IN VIVO APPLICATIONS - PART II 

Minerva Biotecnologica 1998 December;10(4):131-7

Copyright © 1998 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Monoclonal antibodies for therapy: current status and future perspectives

Funaro A. ¹, Horenstein A. L. ¹, Cinti C. ², Malavasi F. ²

¹ Department of Genetic, Biology and Biochemistry, Laboratory of Cell Biology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy; ² Institute of Biology and Genetics, University of Ancona, Ancona, Italy

This sur­vey is an over­view of the appli­ca­tions of ­murine, human­ized, ­human and recom­bi­nant mono­clo­nal anti­bod­ies in ­vivo for diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es. Monoclonal anti­bod­ies ­have ­been ­applied to the diag­no­sis and ther­a­py of an ­array of ­human dis­eas­es; how­ev­er, effec­tive ther­a­py ­using unmod­i­fied ­murine anti­bod­ies has ­often ­been elu­sive. Recently, mono­clo­nal anti­body ther­a­py has ­been revol­u­tio­ni­zed by the iden­tifi­ca­tion of a num­ber of suit­able tar­get mole­cules and by the devel­op­ment of anti­body engi­neer­ing tech­niques ­which ­have ­allowed the pro­duc­tion of a new gen­er­a­tion of mole­cules char­ac­ter­ized by ­reduced immu­nog­e­nic­ity and ­enhanced tar­get­ing abil­ity. More ­than twen­ty ­years ­after the tech­nique for mono­clo­nal anti­bod­ies was ­devised, clin­i­cal ­data is out­lin­ing an increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant ­role for anti­body-­based ther­a­py as a ver­sa­tile and pow­er­ful instru­ment in can­cer treat­ment.