Antibodies in Diagnosis and Therapy

Monoclonal antibodies have had their impact on biomedical research for more than a decade. Beside their exuberant use as reagents quite a number of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches have been followed and an impressive number of technological improvements e.g. humanization recombinant miniantibodies have been elaborated to strengthen the principle. With respect to clinical applications the first generation of antibody 'drugs' is yielding promising results while second and third generation antibody constructs are already underway. The book reviews the status of technological development and brings this into the perspective of clinical results. A rapidly growing amount of clinical data is collected in an expanding number of indications. Hence the review of clinical study results has been grouped according to the fields of oncology and of chronic and acute inflammation. This book will be of interest to scientists working in the fields of oncology immunology internal medicine and clinical chemistry.