Engineering Antibodies for Human Therapy

Abstract

Antibodies have many potential uses in industry and medicine. Through protein engineering, the structure of an antibody can be altered and the molecule made more efficacious for human therapy. For example, the immunogenicity of a nonhuman antibody can be reduced by ‘humanization,’ and improvements can be made on its pharmacodynamics. In addition, new properties and reactivities can be engineered into the molecule, such as multispecificity, multivalency, greater stability, etc.