Diagnostics

Diagnosis of a disease can be achieved either by directly identifying the causal agent or by determining the changes to the normal physiology occurring during a disease. With the advent of imaging techniques and other immunological technologies, disease diagnosis is more precise and less time consuming. The use of antibodies for diagnosis has traditionally been limited to applications like ELISA, IHC and IF or for more advanced applications like FRET to detect conformational changes in proteins. Biomarkers linked to specific disease, either in body fluids or in tissue samples, that can be targeted by monoclonal antibodies make disease diagnosis accurate and non-invasive.

Targeting tumours or diseased area in situ with the use of antibodies conjugated to tracer molecules can provide a very accurate location and size of the diseased area. The use of immunoPET, where antibodies tagged with radioisotopes or other tracers, have been successfully used for imaging lung and brain cancers. With the correct choice of antibodies, even the stage (in case of cancers) or the sub-type of the disease, or even the potential mutations in the target that can affect choice of treatment can also be diagnosed in situ. These methods can be used to not only image the diseased area for ablation but also for monitoring the effectiveness of targeted therapy.

Many of the drawbacks associated with conventional antibodies for clinical use of imaging technologies that include Fc binding or other non-specific adherence, immunogenicity and then the conjugation of tracer molecule can be overcome with the use of the Camelidae VHHantibodies. The single domain antibodies have an inherent advantage due to the lack of the Fc fragment and their quick renal clearance reduces the background noise, thus making them the ideal choice for use in diagnosis.