ABZYME GENERATION USING AN ANTIIDIOTYPIC ANTIBODY AS THE INTERNAL IMAGE OF AN ENZYME ACTIVE-SITE

Since the two reports published in 1986 by the laboratories of R. Lern er and P. G. Schultz, it has been clearly established that antibodies may be induced to act as catalysts in numerous chemical reactions. In all cases, catalytic antibodies were elicited using a substrate-based approach. In the present article, we propose an alternative and comple mentary enzyme-based approach to generate catalytic antibodies. This a pproach uses the properties of anti-idiotypic antibodies to generate i nternal images of enzyme active sites. Experimental results are discus sed for polyclonal and monoclonal anti-idiotypic antibodies.