Engineering antibodies for cancer therapy

Abstract

In the past two decades, monoclonal antibodies have become one of the important therapeutic modalities for the treatment of cancer. Antibody engineering has immensely contributed to the development of antibody-based cancer therapy. The use of recombinant DNA technology has aided the molecular engineering of antibodies in various ways to improve their efficacy, and to counter various challenges posed in the rational designing of high-impact therapeutics for the treatment of a wide spectrum of malignancies. Such engineering of antibodies has been possible mainly due to their inherent plastic and multidomain structure, which makes it amenable to various modifications. This review highlights the advances in the field of antibody engineering which have enabled the use of antibodies for cancer immunotherapy.