Monoclonal antibodies [Monoklonale antikörper]

Nowadays, monoclonal antibodies are present in all fields of science and medicine and are regarded as a promising addition to conventional therapeutic and diagnostic methods. The success of immunotherapy, however, is crucially dependent on the effectiveness and immunogenicity of the reagents and the specificity of the targeted structures. Since an immunoincompetent organism develops antibodies against foreign proteins, a major goal was to design strategies for chimerization or humanization of murine antibodies. There are currently three experimental approaches for producing human monoclonal antibodies: by phage display, immunization of transgenic mice (HuMAb-Mouse), and classic procedures for somatic hybridization of B cells from patients (trioma technique). © Springer Medizin Verlag 2005.