Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 17, Issue 15, 2016

Monoclonal antibodies are currently the most attractive therapeutic modality in a broad range of disease areas, including infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and oncology. Fc engineering is one attractive application to maximize the value or overcome the drawbacks of monoclonal antibodies for therapeutic use. With the Fc region, antibodies bind to several types of receptors, such as Fc gamma receptors, a comple Read More

Monoclonal antibodies and Fc fusion proteins have been successful therapeutics in the field of cancer and immune disease. As their pharmacological activity is dependent on the Fc fragment governing their effector functions and long in vivo half-life, the extensive engineering of the Fc for altered binding of its natural ligands that enable these properties has delivered molecules optimized for their therapeutic effe Read More

Bispecific antibodies with binding specificities for two different antigens have prompted a lot of interest into their development and application. Currently, more than ten bispecific antibodies have been clinically validated for the treatment of various diseases, including cancers and inflammatory diseases. Intensive studies in antibody engineering drive the generation of different bispecific antibody formats that differ i Read More

Advances in genetic and protein engineering and the ability to maintain proliferating mammalian cells in vitro, has allowed reverse engineering of antibodies, i.e. generation of antibodies having specificity for self-antigens. Thus, the lethal consequence of horror autotoxicus, anti-self-responses as envisaged by Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), has been turned to advantage for treatment of multiple disease states. In order to reap these Read More

Protein-based therapeutics has become one of the most rapidly growing and successful drug class in the clinic. However, there are still a number of key challenges that need to be addressed before the full therapeutic potential of protein drugs can be realized. Of note, many biologically active proteins have very short in vivo half-lives, a fact that has greatly hindered their clinical applications. Consequently, several different strat Read More

Fc-based therapeutics including therapeutic full-size monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and Fcfusion proteins represent fastest-growing market in biopharmaceutical industrial. However, one major challenge during development of Fc-based therapeutics is how to maintain their efficacy in clinic use. Many factors may lead to failure in final marketing. For example, the stability and aggregation resistance might not be high enough Read More

Background: Of the various biological activities ascribed to extracts from Casearia sylvestris (guaçatonga), its facilitatory activity, i.e., ability to increase skeletal muscle contractile amplitude, has promising therapeutic applications. In this work, we investigated the components responsible for the previously described neurofacilitation caused by C. sylvestris leaves. Methods: The methanolic fraction of C. sylvestris leaves was Read More

Background: The natural products have increasing important for the development of anticancer agents. Colchicum baytopiorum C.D. Brickell (C. baytopiorum), an endemic species for Turkey, contains colchicine and its derivatives. Stimulation of apoptotic and autophagy-mediated cell deaths are effective strategy for anticancer therapies. Aim: The aim of the study is to determine the role of the extract on both apoptotic and a Read More