Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Monoclonal Antibodies)

Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Monoclonal Antibodies

India is facing shortages of the two monoclonal antibody therapies —Itolizumab and Tocilizumab.

Monoclonal antibodies are artificially created antibodies that aim to aid the body’s natural immune system.
They target a specific antigen — a protein from the pathogen that induces immune response.
These can be created in the lab by exposing white blood cells to a particular antigen.
In the case of Covid-19, scientists usually work with the spike protein of the SARSCoV-2 virus, which facilitates the entry of the virus into the host cell.
In a healthy body, the immune system is able to create antibodies — tiny Y-shaped proteins in our blood that recognise microbial enemies and bind to them, signalling the immune system to then launch an attack on the pathogen.

Since the emergence of Covid-19, multiple treatment strategies and protocols are being used to curb the prevalence of the virus, including neutralizing monoclonal antibodies cocktail drug, casrivimab and imdevimab.
Casirivimab and imdevimab are monoclonal antibodies mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off harmful pathogens such as viruses.

The idea of delivering antibodies to treat a disease dates as far back as the 1900s, when Nobel-prize winning German immunologist Paul Ehrlich proposed the idea of a ‘Zauberkugel‘ (magic bullet), a compound which selectively targets a pathogen.
From then, it took eight decades of research to finally arrive at Muromonab-CD3, the world’s first monoclonal antibody to be approved for clinical use in humans.
Muromonab-CD3 is an immunosuppressant drug given to reduce acute rejection in patients with organ transplants.