Antibodies as delivery systems for diagnostic functions.

Antibodies are highly specific targeting agents. Therefore, they are invaluable for in vitro and in vivo diagnostic applications. With the advent of monoclonal antibody technology, the utilization of antibodies has increased dramatically in almost every field of biological sciences. The present review describes the utility of monoclonal antibodies primarily in the cardiovascular diseases. Monoclonal antimyosin antibodies have been developed for noninvasive scintigraphic imaging of equivocal acute myocardial infarction. They have been negative charge modified to provide quicker in vivo visualization of the targeted antibody, as well as being applied for diagnosis of other cardiomyopathies that have disruption of myocardial cell membrane as an obligatory component of the disease. The radiolabeling techniques developed initially for myocardial necrosis imaging have also been applied for imaging of intravascular blood clots and atherosclerotic lesions. The applications of antimyosin, antifibrin and anti-atherosclerotic lesion specific monoclonal antibodies have all achieved initial clinical verification of their efficacy to target the respective lesions. However, to date, only antimyosin has been approved by the FDA for commercialization. Others must await additional studies to unequivocally verify the clinical utilities.