Normally, antibodies are protective proteins produced by our immune system to fight bacteria or viruses. Their strength comes from their specificity – when you get sick, the B cells in your immune system undergo an extremely precise process of accelerated development, rapidly adapting antibodies that attack any cell in your body, without sticking to any other cells. Connects precisely to whatever is making you unwell. Antibodies can disrupt the functioning of a predatory pathogen or mark it for destruction by other parts of the immune system, making antibodies an important defense against disease in our immune arsenal.
This precise targeting ability also means they are an attractive tool for use in biology or medicine: you can use them to target anything from infection to cancer. After identifying a particular protein or process that goes wrong in a disease, most of the time and work that goes into developing a drug is actually finding drugs that affect the process you've identified, while Affects as little as possible. It should provide maximum treatment effect with minimum side effects. So, since our immune system has already figured out how to do this, scientists have speculated about using antibodies in clinical applications.
The first antibody approved for medical use was muromonab-CD3 in 1986, which (ironically) was designed to suppress the immune system and prevent organ rejection in transplant patients. Hundreds of antibodies are now being used for everything from cancer treatment to surprisingly everyday things – pregnancy tests and rapid Covid tests, for example, rely on antibodies.
Today the latest wave of antibody applications is going after a bigger prize: the aging process. This is because the biology of aging makes us vulnerable to a variety of problems, from diseases like cancer and dementia to weakness, incontinence and gray hair. Slowing down this process could keep us all healthier longer – and part of that is in the antibodies' sights.
In 2021, a research group used antibodies guide a lethal drug aged, “old” cells, whose removal is shown Rats live long and healthy lives. Another paper in 2023 used subtly different drug-bearing antibodies rejuvenate skin Of old rats. An antibody that targets a type of age-related protein modification for clearance Genetically modified mice live longerAnd, in March 2024, another group reported that antibodies Targeting defective bone marrow cells Improved response to a vaccine against the (very poorly named) Friend virus in late middle-aged mice. It would be a beautiful analogy that the molecules our bodies use to fight disease could be repurposed to improve this ability in old age. We also know that these elderly bone marrow cells can Increased risk of blood cancer and heart diseaseTherefore, further testing may reveal broader benefits.
These are all fascinating proofs of principle, and it would make sense to get better skin and immunity with age, but could antibodies slow down aging and keep mice, or humans, actually living longer? Scientists showed this in July 2024 Antibodies target a protein called IL-11 Can reduce inflammation in rats and extend their lifespan by 25 percent best anti-aging drugs We know, like rapamycin. Even better, anti-IL-11 antibodies are already in human trials (very) preliminary results This shows that they are safe.
Greg Winter, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for work on isolating and mass-producing specific antibodies, said at a conference in 2020: “I'm older now, and I have different blood pressures. Have to take pills. I wish I could take an injection once every month or every six months and forget about all those combinations of different pills. The year of fulfillment of his dream may be 2025.