Chimeric antibody: potential applications for drug delivery and immunotherapy.

Antibodies, because of their inherent specificity, seem ideal agents for recognizing and destroying malignant cells. When monoclonal antibodies became available, they appeared ideal candidates for use as anti-cancer drugs. However, monoclonal antibodies as currently constituted still have certain inherent limitations. Transfectomas provide an approach to overcoming some of these limitations. Genetically engineered antibodies can be expressed following gene transfection into lymphoid cells. One of the major advantages of expressing genetically engineered antibodies, is that one is not limited to using antibodies as they occur in nature. In particular, non-immunoglobulin sequences can be joined to antibody sequences creating multi-functional chimeric antibodies. Creation of a family of multi-functional chimeric antibodies with a growth factor joined to a combining specificity may be useful in targeting therapy to malignant cells and delivering drugs into specific locales in the human body. Presence of the growth factor may facilitate transcytosis of chimeric antibody across the blood-brain barrier using growth factor receptors. These novel chimeric antibodies constitute a new family of immunotherapeutic molecules for cancer therapy.