Transplantation tolerance with monoclonal antibodies.

Monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) are powerful tools for manipulating the immune system as they are capable of triggering, amplifying or suppressing immune responses. The resultant effect of monoclonal antibody (MAb) manipulation is related not only to the antigenic specificity of the antibody used, but also to its structural properties and mechanism of action. There has been much interest in using MAbs to control or regulate immune responses in vivo and they are now commonly used successfully in clinical transplantation for the treatment of graft rejection. The induction of transplantation tolerance in adult recipients is an important goal of transplantation research. The development of MAbs for immunotherapy has allowed new approaches for the induction of tolerance to vascularised organ grafts to be explored.