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Transplanted organs from the donor are attacked by antibodies from the recepient. So can't we construct anti-antibodies and destroy specifically those antibodies which are causing the rejections ? (Instead of giving immuno suppressants)

Well, I can think of some problems :

  1. You would have to administer this for life time which is really expensive.

  2. So, what if anti - antiantibodies were made by the body ?

Any other problems you can think of ?

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3 Answers 3

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The root of the problem in this case are not the antibodies but the antibody producing cells (APC). They are capable of producing vast amounts of antibody, so I doubt that this approach would be successful. The problem with targeting these APCs is, that you have to know exactly which are the ones which cause the problem, if you want to target them specifically.

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yes, the no. of clones our immune system can produce after it decides on one is enormous. Good point ! – biogirl Dec 12 '13 at 19:45
Do u think anti-antiantibodies could be made by our body ? – biogirl Dec 12 '13 at 19:46
@Biogirl: No. Antibodies against human antibodies would be sorted out in the differentiation process. It would be fairly dangerous to have such antibodies, since antibodies mainly differ between each other in the site which recognizes the antigen. The rest is highly conserved. So it would be very likely to direct the anti-antibody against these parts and then hit all antibodies. – Chris Dec 12 '13 at 19:56
Alright ! thanks – biogirl Dec 13 '13 at 14:55

Within an organism, antibodies which bind to other antibodies in the body would be eliminated during clonal selection. They are not made by the body after that period, which is in the first few months of life.

Such antibodies would have to be introduced from the outside. Many have been designed or engineered for biotech and as therapeutics.

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Problems: Where are the anti-antibodies created? In a mouse or in a human? Well, of course, you can't use humans to create antibodies so we are left with mice. So what's wrong with that?

  1. Anti-antibodies will be created to the Fc (the constant section of the antibody) region of the antibody because the antibody is foreign and is treated as a foreign antigen.

  2. So, you would have to use chimeric (or humanized) antibodies... I believe they are pretty expensive and takes a long time to make. Let's see that in current time. By now, I am sure you have heard about ZMapp, the drug that treats Ebola. Well, creating that drug is similar to this because they are creating antibodies as well. But I heard that a few doses of this drug takes 3-6 months to make! In this article , it mentions that it takes half a year to make ZMapp!

In conclusion, it's a real challenge, which is why we haven't found drugs that work like how you describe out in the market... But it's nice that you are thinking about this stuff...

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