Gautam Arora, Amrish Chandra
ABSTRACT
Many areas of biomedical research focus on the study of human-specific diseases and medical concerns for which induced animal models are seldom, if ever, appropriate or scientifically relevant. This largely reflects obvious species-specific differences in anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacokinetics, and toxic responses. Use of replacement methods, especially incorporating human cells and tissues, avoids such confounding variables. A specific example of a basic research alternative method, and one that potentially has saved up to one million animals, is the in vitro production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which are used in nearly every field of biomedical research and critical areas of clinical practice. In brief, monoclonal antibodies are antibodies which have a single, selected specificity and which are continuously secreted by immortalised hybridoma cells. The widely-used ascites method of producing mAbs, involves injecting cells into rodent abdominal cavities and is extremely painful and unnecessary. Due to this, a need for developing invitro model was felt, as invitro models are of moderate cost, and can be shown to be either better than, or equal to, the ascites production method in terms of antibody quality. We hereby discuss that the in vivo production of mAbs is no longer necessary, except in rare cases where it is already approved for clinical applications.
Keywords: Monoclonal antibodies, Rodents, Gene, Production