European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

A REVIEW ON MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES AS THERAPEUTIC AGENTS

B. Premkumar*, S. Jeevanandham, R. Gowrish, S. Venkatesh, S. Srimathi

ABSTRACT

Monoclonal antibodies are routinely used in several fields but the great challenge has been their use as therapeutic agents for the treatment of diseases. Monoclonal antibodies are protein molecules made in the laboratory from hybridoma cells by recombinant DNA technology. The therapeutic potential of monoclonal antibodies (mAb) was quickly realised after the hybridoma technique allowed their development in the mid-1970s. It has been more than three decades since the first monoclonal antibody was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) in 1986, and during this time, antibody engineering has dramatically evolved. Current antibody drugs have increasingly fewer adverse effects due to their high specificity. As a result, therapeutic antibodies have become the predominant class of new drugs developed in recent years. Over the past five years, antibodies have become the best-selling drugs in the pharmaceutical market. This review summarizes the therapeutic applications of monoclonal antibodies in treating various disease conditions.

Keywords: Antibodies, Diagnosis, Treatment, Cancer, Infectious disease, Metabolic disorder.