Antibody Engineering for Pursuing a Healthier Future

Saeed, Abdullah F. U. H.; Wang, Rongzhi; Ling, Sumei; Wang, Shihua

Antibodies are critical for immunity against infectious diseases, and extensively used for prevention and treatment of infection caused by bacteria, virus, and other infectious agents to improve public health. Emil von Behring was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901 for his discovery of serum therapy for diphtheria. This led to the term antitoxin and later named as "antikörper" translated "antibody" by Paul Erlich in a 1891 paper (Graham and Ambrosino, 2015) . The emergence of recombinant technologies has revolutionized the selection, humanization, and development of therapeutic antibodies and permitted the strategic design of antibody-based elements for specificity and diversity. A number of genetically engineered mAbs have been used for the treatment of numerous infectious diseases (Hudson and Souriau, 2003) .