IgM Antibody

The IgM class of antibodies recognizes a large variety of pathogenic antigens and is highly active in cytotoxic and cytolytic reactions due to its superior activation of the complement system. IgM antibody has applications in Antibody Drug Discovery. Just a few reasons why IgM antibody can be an attractive therapeutic are listed below.

• IgM antibody can make a good biologic against cancer owing to its strong avidity as well as complement fixation property.
• For certain targets, particularly those such as glycol-epitopes on cancer cells, an IgM antibody might be the best approach.
• An IgM antibody might also be useful as a vaccine adjuvant, acting as soluble toll-like receptors through the formation of immune complexes with antigen.
• It has been suggested to use IgMs as preventive vaccine.
• The innate ability of IgM to mediate autoimmunity can be utilized to ameliorate graft rejections during transplantation procedures.
• The inflammatory control IgM antibody provides systemic exposure to self antigens could be harnessed to treat arthritis.

Recent advancements have made IgM antibody amenable to manipulation that allows further tuning of its effector function to meet the above therapeutic needs. There are several requirements for IgM antibodies to be considered as a potential standard platform, including in vitro optimization, recombinant production, and purification. IgM antibody variable chains have been manipulated using phage display technology in vitro to optimize IgM therapeutic antibody candidates. Their recombinant yields in cell culture have been improved and methods for purification have been optimized. Based on these advances an IgM therapeutics platform can be built.