Advantages of Human Antibodies

Antibodies derived from mice are of limited use as therapeutic agents since the human immune system recognizes such antibodies as foreign molecules and may trigger a defense reaction against them. In this case, the human organism combats the antibody, which reduces the benefits of the therapeutic substance. It is possible to reduce such defense reactions by chimerizing or humanizing the mouse antibodies, thus decreasing their immunogenicity.

Development of Antibody Technologies

Only recently technological advances have introduced fully human antibodies, which should show very few or no side effects at all. MorphoSys has developed a concept for the in vitro generation of highly specific and fully human antibodies and established an antibody library called HuCAL (Human Combinatorial Antibody Library).