Biologics and Biotechnology Flashcards
Composition of Biologics
Sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living entities such as cells and tissues
The main challenge encountered in development of biotech drugs is
How to maintain a therapeutically meaningful concentration of the macromolecule in the vicinity of its target for the desired period of time and without biotransformation
Drug delivery problems often related to
The macromolecular character of biotech drugs
The currently approved biotech drugs in the US are
Recombinant proteins, development times are shorter than conventional small molecules
Group of techniques that allows separation, sequencing, cloning, and combining of different DNA molecules
Recombinant DNA technology
Recombinant DNA tech made possible by what enzymes
Restriction enzymes: cut DNA at specific sequence generating reproducible set of nucleotide fragments
DNA ligases: insert DNA restriction fragments into replicating DNA molecules producing rDNA
Biotech drugs can be distinguished based on whether they are
Physiological or non-physiological or new biotech products
Physiological biotech drugs
- For substitution (clotting factors, insulin, hGH, erythropoietin)
- For therapeutic purposes in non-physiological concentrations (interferons, cytokines)
Y-shaped molecules formed by heavy and light polypeptide chains
Antibodies (sIg)
Monoclonal Ab
Contain two identical Fab domains forming the arms and one Fc domain forming the stem
Antibody molecules
Bind to the highly variable regions located at the ends of each arm
Antigen
Antibodies are made by
A class of WBC called B cells
