Human Monoclonal Antibodies as a New Class of Antiinfective Compounds
1Medical School, Universitá Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy
2GeNeuro SA, 1228 Geneva, Switzerland
3Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA
Human Monoclonal Antibodies as a New Class of Antiinfective Compounds
Description
Over the last thirty years, monoclonal antibodies (mAb) have made a dramatic transformation from useful scientific tools to extremely powerful human therapeutics. At this moment, more than 30 mAbs are available in the market for very diverse indications, with sales worldwide totaling more than 30 billions of dollars in 2010. While polyclonal antibody preparations, usually known as antisera, represent an historic treatment dating back over 200 years, to date, there is only one antiinfectious disease mAb approved for clinical use, although there are several mAbs deep in the clinical pipeline. Thus, it is likely that, after anticancer and anti-inflammatory therapy, the field of infectious disease will be the next arena where human mAbs will become important players. We are interested in articles that explore the utilization of human mAbs for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Clinical utilization of existing antiinfective human mAbs
- Development of novel antiinfective human mAbs to address unmet clinical needs
- Discovery and development of antiviral mAbs
- Discovery and development of antibacterial and antitoxin mAbs
- Discovery and development of antifungal mAbs
- mAbs as a tool for dissecting human antibody responses and the design of novel vaccines
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