Human Antibodies

[blazinfury]

I was reading about how antibodies are something produced in animals for humans who are unable to synthesize them. However, I am confused about how scientists ensure that an immune reaction doesn't occur from the recipient? Are those antibodies modified somehow and/or is the animals modified as well to ensure that no immune reaction occurs. Thanks.

[stetch14]

Antibodies are the actual molecules that attack foreign invaders, they don't attack other antibodies.

 

[blazinfury]

I was referring to there being a potential immune response against potential foreign substances.

[ewmon]

Could you give an example, because I'm thinking there's more to it than what you described. I would think that animal antibodies would cause an attack on human antibodies, and vice versa. Antibodies bond to foreign molecules.

Edited May 6, 2013 by ewmon

[blazinfury]

Well I was reading about an instance where human antibodies can be made in an animal, such as a rabbit because the human has some kind of genetic deficiency and was unable to synthesize it. So my quest was what modifications if any have to be made in the animal to then safety transplant those antibodies to the human and/or does the human recipient need to take any drugs or something to prevent the body from seeing those antibodies as foreign.

[CharonY]

Injecting foreign antibodies will elicit an immune response (that is how secondary antibodies are raised). AFAIK there are trials of using transgenic mice to produce human sequences. I think some of them even went to the trial phase, but I am not up to date on this matter. However, these are supposed to be used for therapeutic purposes and I would be surprised if that would be able to be diverse enough to replace a complete immune response.