Engineering antibodies for the clinic

In the last ten years recombinant 'protein drugs' such as erythropoeitin or tissue plasminogen activator have become widely used in the clinic. After some early setbacks antibodies look well placed to join them. A decade of antibody engineering is finally beginning to pay off with a string of chimeric and humanized antibodies gaining the Food and Drug Administration approval in the last two years. Here we will report on recent developments in the clinical application of antibodies, in particular, in the treatment of malignant lymphoma. We will also discuss some of the current strategies for the engineering of both whole antibodies (IgG) and recombinant antibody fragments for the next generation of antibody therapeutics.