ANTIBODY ENGINEERING AND IMMUNOCONJUGATES FOR CANCER THERAPY

In the past three decades, monoclonal antibodies have become increasingly important class of disease modifying drugs for numerous indications including cancer, inflammatory diseases, and viral infections. Antibody therapy can be used in a variety of ways either alone or combination with cytotoxic compounds. Molecular antibody engineering technologies coupled with advances allow the generation of better antibodies with fully human sequence and optimized function thereby increases the antibody efficacy. Recombinant antibodies and its fragments have been fused to radioisotopes, drugs, toxins, enzymes and antibody-directed pre-targeting followed by prodrug activation (ADEPT) has an alternative strategies for promising therapy of cancer. Various monoclonal antibodies (mabs) have been developed and approved as immunotherapeutic agents. This review briefly describes new development of antibodies and immunoconjugates for broader applications.