Engineering antibodies for the clinic

In the last ten years recombinant 'protein drugs' such as erythropoeitin or tissue plasminogen activator have become widely used in the clinic. After some early setbacks antibodies look well placed to join them. A decade of a ntibody engineering is finally beginning to pay off with a string of chimer ic and humanized antibodies gaining the Food and Drug Administration approv al in the last two years. Here we will report on recent developments in the clinical application of antibodies, in particular, in the treatment of mal ignant lymphoma. We will also discuss some of the current strategies for th e engineering of both whole antibodies (IgG) and recombinant antibody fragm ents for the next generation of antibody therapeutics.