Monoclonal Antibodies prime weapon against Cancer

As a child, your parents most certainly arranged to have you immunised against hooping cough, this virus being a catastrophic illness for many over past century. Imagine now, that we could be so close to a development for a similar control of antibodies that could cease the spread of cancer, either by injection, or by tablet.
Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Centre suggest that monoclonal antibody therapy can be inproved to become more powerful than it is today, believing it has the capacity to immune people against cancer.
Dr. Louis Weiner, an internationally recognised expert in development and use of monoclonal antibodies said "treatment modifications might be able to prolong, amplify and shape, a continuous immune response to cancer cells.". Advances in drug research have made strides in controlling cell malfunctions in breast cancer, colerectal,
lung and blood cancers, where monoclonal antibodies are offering effective treatment, but appear to primarily work by forcing tumor related receptors to shut down pro-growth signals said Dr. Weiner.
"For years it has been presumed that the ability of antibodies to interfere with malignant cell-related signaling is the dominant mechanism of anticancer activity, but we have also known that the normal job of an antibody is to deliver an antigen to the body's immune system which then destroys the target" Weiner continued.
"Drugs like Herceptin and Rituxan are examples that work in part by immunising people against cancer, but at this point, the magnitude of that response is variable and frequently very small".
Dr. Weiner says scientists now believe that it will be possible to alter the anibodies so that they induce both kinds of human immunity - the innate immune response that is short-lasting and which directly kills tumor cells, and a long lasting "memory" response that comes from the adaptive immune response.
For the first time we are using technology that can measure the immune response that is occuring in monoclonal antibodies that amplify and shape that immune response to become more powerful. These new directions are very exiting, concluded Dr. Weiner. Acknowledge Sciencedaily.com Geoff.