What is a monoclonal antibody?

What is a monoclonal antidody and how do they prevent the spread of cancer?

so antibodies are tiny molecular structures which can latch onto bad invader cells such as viruses etc and stop them harming us. we have many different types of antibody designed to combat specific invaders.

Reply 2

YusufS

Monoclonal antibodies are clones of a specific lymphocyte and bind to whatever antigen the lymphocyte usually binds to.

To treat cancer they can be used to

A- bind to the receptors on the surface of the cancer cells and therefore prevent the growth stimulation molecule binding to the cancer cell
B- carry toxic drugs, radioactive substances or chemicals to the cancer cells
C- bind to the cancer cell and act as a signal to the immune system, to attract white blood cells which attack the cancer cells

These all prevent the cancer cells from growing and dividing further

This info is from the AQA GCSE spec, hope my answer helps :smile:

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 3

G-Sci

Original post by strawberrry67891

What is a monoclonal antidody and how do they prevent the spread of cancer?

YusufS has given you the best answer so far, but pretty vague.
How much detail do you need? Details of how it induces cell death? CDC/ADCC?

Specific examples and their targets? For example bevacizumab is an anti-VEGF antibody which prevents angiogenesis and angiogenesis is essential for the successful establishment of a secondary tumour.

There are a lot available now, trastuzumab is for HER2+ breast cancer, it effectively blocks the receptor-ligand interaction and therefore intracellular signalling. Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) is an antibody-drug conjugate, once the drug binds to the receptor it is internalised, taking the drug (emtansine) with it and delivering it to the inside of the cell, at the same time as blocking the receptor/ligand binding as in trastuzumab.

Look up resistance too, that is quite interesting.

I have plenty more examples if needed.

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