Natural monoclonal antibodies and cancer.

Immunity is responsible for recognition and elimination of infectious particles and for removal of cellular waste, modified self structures and transformed cells. Innate or natural immunity acts as a first line defense and is also the link to acquired immunity and memory. By using the human hybridoma technology, a series of monoclonal antibodies and several new tumor-specific targets could be identified. A striking phenomenon of immunity against malignant cells is that all so far isolated tumor-specific antibodies were germ-line coded natural IgM antibodies. And neither in animals nor in humans affinity-maturated tumor-specific IgG antibodies have been detected so far. These IgM's preferentially bind to carbohydrate epitopes on post-transcriptionally modified surface receptors, which are recently patented and preferentially remove malignant cells by inducing apoptosis to avoid inflammatory processes. Our "biology-" or "function-driven" method represents a unique yet powerful approach compared to the typical approaches on screening compounds or antibodies against non-validated targets (mostly differentially expressed). Moreover, the approach creates a competitive patenting strategy of creating proprietary antibodies and validated targets at the same time, which has the potential of further streamlining the discovery of new cancer therapies.