Context:

• India reached out to Australia to procure monoclonal antibody doses to combat the Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala.

What are Monoclonal Antibodies?

• Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the behaviour of antibodies produced by the immune system to protect against diseases and foreign substances.
• They are produced through a process that involves extracting specific antibodies from human blood and then cloning them.
• They are specifically designed to target certain antigens.
• Niels K. Jerne, Georges J.F. Köhler and César Milstein were awarded the medicine Nobel Prize in 1984 for their work on “the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies”.

Development of Monoclonal Bodies:

• Dr. Köhler and Dr. Milstein, who established a generation of monoclonal antibodies for use in humans in 1975, used this principle to describe the hybridoma.
  • Hybridoma is a fusion cell made up of B cells (white blood cells that produce antibodies) and myeloma cells (abnormal plasma cells).
•  These hybrid cells allowed the researchers to produce a single antibody clone, which came to be known as a monoclonal antibody.

How do monoclonal antibodies work?

• Monoclonal antibodies are specifically engineered and generated to target a disease. 
• They are meant to attach themselves to the specific disease-causing antigen. An antigen is most likely to be a protein.
  • For Example: 
    • REGEN-COV2 is a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies developed to target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. 
    • The monoclonal antibodies bind to specific parts of the spike protein, blocking its ability to infect healthy cells.

What is m102.4?

• According to research published in The Lancet journal of Infectious Diseases, m102.4 is a “potent, fully human” monoclonal antibody.

• It neutralizes Hendra and Nipah viruses, both outside and inside of living organisms. 
• The m102.4 monoclonal antibody was first developed by Dr. Christopher Broder and his team at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) in Bethesda, Maryland.
• Present Clinical Status: As of now, the drug is used on a ‘compassionate use’ basis.