Lecture 4 - B Cell Development and Clinical Applications Flashcards
What is found on a pre-B cell?
A mu heavy chain only.
What takes place in forming an immature B cell from a pre-B cell?
Light chain rearrangement.
At what point in B cell development are self reactive B cells killed off via apoptosis?
During immature B cell development.
What are CD19 and CD20?
Markers for B cells used clinically to measure levels. CD19 is present from the pre-B cell stage and onwards, CD20 is present from the immature B cell stage and onwards.
What is passive immunity?
Transfer of pre-formed antibodies.
What is active immunity?
Adaptive immune response to an antigen.
What is the half-life of IgG?
3-4 weeks
Name two examples of natural passive immunity.
Maternal IgG in newborns, mother’s milk IgA (dimeric secretory)
What is intravenous immunoglobulin and what is it used to treat?
It is prepared from pooled sera of thousands of donors to get an average Ig count in people who are humorally immunocompromised. Used to treat people with primary immunodeficiency diseases and children with HIV.
What are mouse monoclonal antibodies primarily used for clinically?
For immunological assays. Note this is also the basis for home pregnancy tests.
Compare chimeric vs. humanized monoclonal antibodies.
Chimeric antibodies have mouse variable regions and human everything else.
Humanized antibodies have only mouse CDRs and human everything else.
Both used in humans clinically.
Very briefly, how are fully human monoclonal antibodies made?
Take B cells from peeps, get VL and VH genes out and put them into phage, find the phage that makes the antibody you want, grow that phage.
What are plantibodies? What is an example of their use in recent time?
Human antibodies made by tobacco plants. Used experimentally for the recent Ebola outbreak in some patients.
