Strategies for development of medicine using antibodies as toots and of therapeutic antibodies

Abstract

Antibodies can specifically bind to various antigens and form a large repertoire. If we well understand the characteristics of antibodies and utilize them as tools, we can obtain various informations which will be useful for development of medicine. Furthermore, since antibodies themselves are powerful self-defense molecules, we can directly develop human therapeutic antibodies against various diseases. In this review, I describe what should be considered and what kinds of problems should be solved to reach the above goals, based on the experiences of our “antibody project”.