TY  - EJOU
AU  - Damme, Jo Van 
AU  - Opdenakker, Ghislain 
AU  - Damme, Sam Van 
AU  - Struyf, Soffe 

TI  - Antibodies as tools in cytokine discovery and usage for diagnosis  and therapy of inflammatory diseases
T2  - European Cytokine Network

PY  - 2023
VL  - 34
IS  - 1
SN  - 1952-4005

AB  - Polyclonal antisera from patients have been at the basis of the description of autoimmune diseases and today monoclonal antibodies are widely used in the therapy of cancer and many inflammatory diseases. How antisera and antibodies in combination with traditional <i>in vitro</i> and <i>in vivo</i> biological test systems have been instrumental reagents for the discovery of new cytokines is illustrated here for interleukin-1, -6 and -8. Furthermore, widely used immunological detection/quantification systems, such as ELISAs and multiplex assays, based on the use of either polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies, are often fraught with misinterpretations, because the results are affected by the possible occurrence of posttranslational modifications (PTMs) of the analytes. Cytokines and chemokines are present <i>in vivo</i> as mixtures of proteoforms with different amino- or carboxytermini or carrying heterogeneous glycan chains and possibly also being subject to citrullination, pyroglutamination and other PTMs. Increased knowledge about the specificities of antibody (cross)reactivities with cytokine ligands have improved diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, with inflammatory processes, including cancer-associated inflammation, at the frontline.
KW  - cytokines
KW  -  chemokines
KW  -  interferons
KW  -  antibody therapy
KW  -  immunoassay
KW  -  bioassay
KW  -  proteoforms

DO  - 10.1684/ecn.2023.0484