Monoclonal antibodies: recent development in drug delivery

Awareness to monoclonal antibodies (mABs) has been intensely increasing yearly. Due to highly specific targeting of antigens, mABs can be used for the treatment of various type of diseases (e.g., oncology, inflammation, infectious disease, and autoimmune diseases). mABs formulations were developed for well patient compliance, cost savings, and better lifestyle management. mABs are widely investigated in current drug delivery system because they evade host cell and to gather a medicinal agent to a selective cell for enhanced pharmacological action. Due to size ranging from ~10-100 nm, antibody-based bioconjugates have unlocked a new area of clinical possibilities. mABs shows promise to compensate the limitations associated with current therapy such as side effects, lack of efficiency, accumulation of the drug at the target site, poor pharmacokinetic properties, etc. mABs researched for targeting delivery systems or drugs to their target site because they easily conjugated to nanoparticulate drug delivery system. This chapter focuses on the use of mABs as targeting ligands and various strategies for conjugating these ligands to nanoparticles and drugs etc.