Antibody engineering and its applications in tumor targeting and intracellular immunization

During the last decade, recombinant antibody engineering has emerged as one of the most promising approaches for the design, selection and production of molecules for basic research, medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. This MiniReview describes the major findings that have led to the developme nt of this powerful technique, with an emphasis on the use of Escherichia c oil and filamentous phage as a tool allowing powerful selection procedures from large libraries as well as the use of intracellular expression of anti body fragments as a new class of neutralizing molecules with a potential us e in therapy. The future of these rapidly evolving technologies is discusse d. (C) 2000 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.