[S8-1] Development of antibodies for the treatment of bacterial infectious diseases: present and future
Antitoxin sera, which are obtained by immunization of animals with toxoids, were the first effective therapeutic agents for infectious diseases in the world. However, there are problems such as serum sickness and anaphylaxis followed by the administration of serum from different species of animals to humans, and a certain risk has been involved in its use. In addition, immunizing animals for preparing antisera requires huge cost and raises concerns to animal welfare. In recent years, new technologies and various platforms have been developed for the high-throughput production of human monoclonal antibodies, and their efficacy has been demonstrated in tumors and autoimmune diseases. In the field of infectious diseases, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies have been widely used in clinical practice, especially for emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola virus disease and COVID-19. In this talk, we will introduce the current status of therapeutic human monoclonal antibodies in the field of infectious diseases. We will present our efforts to contribute to the countermeasures to diseases caused by bacterial toxins or animal venoms by replacing antisera with cell-cultured human monoclonal antibodies, which ought to be safer and are expected to be stably supplied. We would like to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of antibody therapy and its future development.