The ground-breaking discovery of monoclonal antibody (mAb) technology by Kohler and Milstein in 1975 provided the possibility of creating antibodies as a class of therapeutics (Kohler & Milstein, 1975). Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are one of the most widely used drug platforms for infectious diseases or cancer therapeutics because they selectively target pathogens, infectious cells, cancerous cells, and even immune cells. In this way, they mediate the elimination of target molecules and cells with fewer side effects than other therapeutic modalities. In particular, cancer therapeutic mAbs can recognize cell-surface proteins on target cells and then kill the targeted cells by multiple mechanisms.
Humanization greatly reduces a therapeutic antibody’s immunogenicity in humans, making chronic administration possible. Such advances in antibody technologies have resulted in an explosion in the development of therapeutic mAbs over the last decade. A series of antibody derivatives, which include Fc-fusion proteins, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), immunocytokines (antibody-cytokine fusions), and antibody-enzyme fusions, are also developed and commericialized as a new treatment.