Drugs antibody specificity

An important field of development is the batched flow production of metal nanoclusters attached to biomolecules such as DNA under GMP laboratory standards. This conjures up hopes of applying metallic nanomaterials coupled with drugs, antibodies, or with oligonucleotides for cell-specific cancer diagnosis and therapy. With the help of such nanometallic tools, it can be expected that diseases or predispositions to diseases will be diagnosed earlier with the help of nanodrugs than is possible at present. 

Clinically, monoclonal antibodies are also proposed as drug delivery vehicles in certain tumors where specific tumor-associated antigens are expressed. In this context, investigators have found that by conjugating toxins such as the A chain polypeptide of the plant protein ricin or the bacterial toxin from Corynebacterium diphtheriae to monoclonal antibodies specific for certain tumor type, as few as one or two molecules of antibody-toxin conjugate can destroy a tumor cell in vitro. Some success has also been obtained in clinical trials with monoclonal antibody-toxin conjugates. 

Classical carrier-linked prodrugs Site-specific chemical delivery systems Macromolecular prodrugs Drug-antibody conjugates... 

Liposomes, in particular, may offer the future possibility of delivering enzymes (and other drugs) to specific body tissues. This could be attained by incorporating target molecules (e.g. specific receptors, glycoproteins or antibodies) in the liposome membrane, which selectively... 

A major application of monoclonal antibodies is in clinical assays for drugs, bacterial and viral products, tumor antigens, hormones, and other circulating proteins. Their use in conjunction with immunoassays (Box 31-C) has provided increased specificity and sensitivity. Another major application is to observe binding of antibodies to specific proteins by electron microscopy. The location of specific receptor proteins can be established - as can the locations of ribosomal proteins and many other cellular components (Fig. 29-1). Monoclonal antibodies to acetylcholine receptors have been shown to induce symptoms of myasthenia gravis (Box 31-D), supporting the autoimmune origin of that disease. 1 Monoclonal antibodies specific for such a small hapten as mercuric ion have been isolated.k... 

Many attempts have been made to link monoclonal antibodies specific for antigenic determinants on cancer cells to protein toxins such as ricin (Box 29-A). It is hoped that this may provide an effective way of carrying toxins into cancer cells/ 1 r Therapeutic human monoclonal antibodies are already in use as antirejection drugs for kidney transplantation, for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn disease, and for some types of cancer/... 

The principal components in radioimmunoassay (RIA) are a drug labelled with a suitable radioisotope, an antibody specific to that drug, and the assay sample. The drug-antibody complex (bound drug) must be separated from the free drug in the later stages of the assay. 

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