Clinical experience with murine, human and genetically engineered monoclonal antibodies

Document Type

Book Chapter

Department

Haematology and Oncology, East Africa

Abstract

Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), by virtue of their unique antigen specificity, have emerged as important biologic reagents with wide ranging clinical utility. Over the last decade, MAbs have moved from the laboratory bench to the forefront of innovative clinical application. Early clinical trials utilized murine antibodies since these could be readily produced by immunizing mice with candidate antigens and generating hybridomas that secrete antigen- specific MAbs (Koehler and Milstein 1975). Extensive clinical experience with murine MAbs has led to the recognition of a number of limitations associated with the use of such xenogeneic proteins. Thus, murine antibodies are immunogenic (Dillman et al. 1984; Khazaeli et al. 1988) and have a short circulating half-life which often makes frequent administration necessary (Meeker et al. 1985; LoBuglio et al. 1988).

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

The pharmacology of monoclonal antibodies

Share

COinS