Manufacturing Immunity to Disease in a Test Tube: The Magic Bullet Realized

摘要

Although it took over one hundred years, Ehrlich's concept of the magic bullet is nowa reality. Today, therapeutic antibodies are, arguably, the most important class of newdrugs for the treatment of illnesses ranging from Alzheimer's disease to cancer. The emergence of therapeutic antibodies had to wait for advances in immunochemistry that allowed construction of antibodies in vitro. The centerpiece of the newtec hnology is the combinatorial antibody library, which essentially allows one to synthesize an artificial immune system with a diversity that exceeds that of the natural repertoire