Bispecific antibodies and their use in applied research

Abstract

Bispecific antibodies (BsAb) can, by virtue of combining two binding specificities, improve the selectivity and efficacy of antibody-based treatment of human disease. Antibodies with two distinct binding specificities have great potential for a wide range of clinical applications as targeting agents for in vitro and in vivo immunodiagnosis, therapy and for improving immunoassays. They have shown great promise for targeting cytotoxic effector cells, delivering radionuclides, toxins or cytotoxic drugs to specific targets, particularly tumour cells. The development of BsAb research goes through three main stages: chemical cross linking of murine-derived monoclonal antibody, hybrid hybridomas and engineered BsAb. This article is providing the potential applications of bispecific antibodies. [Vet World 2012; 5(12.000): 775-780]

Keywords

• bispecific antibodies
• immunoassay
• immunotherapy
• monoclonal antibody