Superantibody activities: new players in innate and adaptive immune responses

Heinz Kohler and Sudhir Paul propose the term superantibody to describe multifunctional antibodies that combine the classical antigen-binding function with a nonclassical, qualitatively distinct, biological function. Discrete ligand-binding sites in the variable domain within these antibodies are responsible for their nonclassical biological functions, such as chemical catalysis, nucleotide binding, self-binding and superantigen binding.