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NYC Campaign to alert the authorities if you see something suspicious. Antibodies are like the citizens that tell our body that something fishy is going down. |
By Biology Editor, Jeanne Garbarino
There is a campaign sponsored by NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) encouraging citizens to speak up if they see any activity or persons acting in a suspicious manner. Plastered all over buses, subways, and commuter rails are posters with the following message: If you see something, say something. This type of imagery reminds me very much of our own biological warning system programmed to, in essence, “speak up” should a suspicious character of the microscopic kind make it’s way into our bodies. It is through our immune response that our bodies “say something” in the event of infection.
There is a campaign sponsored by NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) encouraging citizens to speak up if they see any activity or persons acting in a suspicious manner. Plastered all over buses, subways, and commuter rails are posters with the following message: If you see something, say something. This type of imagery reminds me very much of our own biological warning system programmed to, in essence, “speak up” should a suspicious character of the microscopic kind make it’s way into our bodies. It is through our immune response that our bodies “say something” in the event of infection.
At the very crux of the immune
response are tiny proteins called antibodies, which are basically like the citizens
that report any suspicious activities.
Antibodies often travel in the blood stream, and upon crossing paths
with a foreign invader (bacteria, virus, etc.), an antibody will flag it down
and alert the “local authorities” of the body (aka immune cells).
For many years, scientists have
been studying antibodies and their role in the immune response, revealing many
aspects surrounding their structure and function. And through these studies, we have figured
out how to use antibodies in ways that go beyond the immune system. For instance, antibodies against human
chorionic growth hormone, or hCG, are the essential ingredients in home
pregnancy tests. More recently,
scientists have, in many ways, harnessed the power of antibodies for
pharmaceutical uses. A very popular
example of this is the drug Remicade,
which is used to treat severe autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid
arthritis and Crohn’s
Disease. But, what exactly are antibodies and how do
they work?
Well, I am glad I asked me that
question.
As I mentioned, antibodies are
proteins that we make. Specifically,
they are produced by specialized immune cells called B-cells, which are the main
players during our humoral
immune response. B-cells will either
secrete an antibody, which can then float around the circulatory system, or the
antibody can remain attached to the outside of the B-cell. If there is something “foreign” in our
bodies, such as a virus or bacterium, antibodies will recognize and attach
itself to the invader, which is scientifically referred to as an antigen. When an antibody attaches to an antigen, it
signals to our body to get rid of it. Amazingly,
each antibody can only recognize 1 antigen, which is why we need so many
different types of antibodies!
To get a better idea of how
antibodies work, it is important to learn their basic structure. Antibodies are ‘Y’ shaped proteins, and have
both constant and variable regions. The
constant region is the same among all antibodies within a specific class (there are several different classes), where
as the variable region is the portion of the antibody that is designed to
recognize a specific antigen.
To better explain this, consider
the antibody to be a lacrosse stick. The
“stick” part is the constant region, and the mesh part is the variable
region. Now consider the lacrosse ball
to be the antigen (i.e. bacterium or virus).
Only the lacrosse ball that is a triangle can fit into the lacrosse
stick with the triangle-shaped mesh pocket.
The same is true for the circle.
And so on. Once the ball fits
into the mesh, meaning, once the antibody binds the antigen, a cascade of
events is set off, essentially sounding the alarm. Under normal, healthy circumstances, we take
care of the antigen and the infectious agent is removed. (Note: there are different classes of antibodies and each class has it's own "stick" part.)
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A basic analology for how antibodies work. |
Building off our understanding of
how antibodies work, scientists have been able to develop monoclonal
antibody therapy, which is the use of specific antibodies to stimulate an
immune response against a disease. For instance, we now use monoclonal antibody
therapy to combat a variety of cancers by injecting cancer patients with
antibodies designed to recognize specific components on the surface of tumor
cells. This helps signal to the body
that it should turn on the immune response and get rid of the tumor cells.
The list of conditions where monoclonal antibody is a potential therapy is growing, and includes a variety of
autoimmune diseases and cancers, post-organ transplant therapy, human respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV) infections in children, and most recently hemophilia
A. Also being explored is the use of
monoclonal antibody therapy for addiction, which could essentially
revolutionize how we can help people kick extremely difficult habits (i.e. cocaine or methamphetamine).
Despite the thousands of tedious
and repetitive assays I’ve done using antibodies in my own laboratory, I know
that I can never lose sight of how amazing these little proteins are.
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This post is a mental appetizer for another post on monoclonal antibodies by DXS tech editor, Jeffrey Perkel. His post specifically discusses the potential use of monoclonal antibody to treat the X-linked blood disorder, hemophilia A. Read about it here.
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This post is a mental appetizer for another post on monoclonal antibodies by DXS tech editor, Jeffrey Perkel. His post specifically discusses the potential use of monoclonal antibody to treat the X-linked blood disorder, hemophilia A. Read about it here.
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