Where is monoclonal antibody therapy leading us?

While there is something of a lag in new therapies for veterinary use, we are gradually seeing more monoclonal antibody products becoming available on the veterinary market, with the recent release of two anti-nerve growth factor therapies bedinvetmab (Librela) and frunevetmab (Solensia) for the management of osteoarthritis in dogs and cats respectively. As this area expands, monoclonal solutions for the management of acute diseases are also being released, for example in COVID-19 treatment, expanding the possibility of more specific treatments for serious viral disease; a real step forward from current therapies that tend to be targeted broadly against viral DNA/RNA replication with significant potential for side effects.

For many of us, this group of agents did not feature as part of our undergraduate pharmacology, so what are they, are they safe and how effective might they be? Well, the origin of this technology was to identify antigen-specific plasma cells that produce antibodies to that specific antigen, and then to fuse these cells to myeloma cells to make them immortal. The process is relatively inefficient, but specialist medias have been developed to promote hybridoma growth. The rapid evolution of molecular techniques has led to a variety of other solutions to monoclonal antibody production, such as phage display or single B cell culture, also allowing their applicability to multiple species.