Monoclonal Antibody

 What

are monoclonal antibodies?  How are monoclonal antibodies made?  Immunotheraphy for cancer with monoclonal antibodies.  How are monoclonal antibodies used in cancer diagnosis and treatment?

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Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) are important substances used in biomedical research, in treatment of such diseases as infections and especially cancer and in diagnosis of diseases. These antibodies are produced by clones or cell lines obtained from animals that immunized with the substance that is the subject of study. To produce the desired mAb, the cells must be grown in either of two ways: one of them is injection into the abdominal cavity of a suitably prepared mouse and second is tissue culturing cells in plastic.

 The

basic mechanism of a monoclonal antibody is the same as an antibody produced by body.  When monoclonal antibodies are used in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, certain substances are often added to them to give them their therapeutic and diagnostic characteristics.  They can also be used on their own to block or encourage certain responses from the immune system

When monoclonal antibodies are used in therapy, they are often attached to different drugs or toxins, which are then delivered to the target cells without harming the other cells in the body.  Used alone, they can encourage the body's own immune system to recognize certain cells as foreign and launch an attack.  In diagnosis, radioactive markers are attached to them to locate a certain kind of cell within the body.  They are used in diagnostic imaging of internal organs and tumors. 

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Hybridoma cell is created by the fusion of two cells in order to bind the different characteristics of the two cells into one cell. One of these cells is an antibody producing cell BLymphocyte cell from a lab mouse and the other is a tumor cell called a myeloma. The tumor cells can donate to a normal cell the ability growing and at a ratio it exceeds normal cell growth. A hybridoma cell produces the monoclonal antibody that was originally produced by the B-Lymphocyte cell. After the hybridoma cells are created and chosen for effectiveness in the lab, they are put into media that can help them grow and subsequently produce the monoclonal antibodies. There are two ways of doing this. One is to grow them in a flask in a lab (In Vitro), and the other is to grow them in the stomach lining of mice.

Monoclonal antibodies is used in cancer therapy and also used in many ways of cancer including diagnosis, controlling and treatment of diseases.  With treatment, monoclonal antibodies can react against specific antigens on cancer cells and can increase the patients immune response. Monoclonal antibodies can be arranged to behave against to cell growth factors, it blocks cancer cell growth. When the antibodies bind to antigen bearing cells they deliver their toxin to tumor in direct way. 

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Monoclonal antibody drugs were initially used to treat advanced cancers that hadn't responded to chemotherapy or cancers that had returned despite treatment. However, because these treatments have proved to be effective, certain monoclonal antibody treatments are being used earlier in the course of the disease. For instance, rituximab can be used as an initial treatment in some types of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and trastuzumab (Herceptin) is used in the treatment of some forms of early breast cancer.

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of the monoclonal antibody therapies are still considered experimental. For this reason, these treatments are usually reserved for advanced cancers that aren't responding to standard, proven treatments