Anti-idiotypic antibodies: powerful tools in diagnosis and therapy.

Mouse x mouse hybridomas secreting monoclonal anti-idiotypic antibodies have been prepared from BALB/c mice immunized with syngeneic monoclonal antibodies specific for IgE, AFP, CEA and TSH respectively. The hybridomas were selected on the basis that the secreted antibodies competed with antigen for binding to the immunizing idiotope. Using IgE and AFP as a model it could be shown that syngeneic antigen inhibitable monoclonal anti-idiotypic antibodies can act well as antigen surrogate. Thus a complementary idiotype-anti-idiotype antibody pair could be used in a competitive assay wherein the extend of idiotype-anti-idiotype complex formation is inversely proportional to the amount of antigen in the sample. Apart from this a lot of human and animal studies have shown that this interaction between idiotype and anti-idiotype could be utilized to prevent certain infectious diseases and to treat some kinds of cancers.