Monoclonal antibodies have become a rapidly expanding class of pharmaceuticals for treating a variety of human diseases, including cancer.
By studying the structure and function of antitumor antibodies specific for these targets, the interaction of the antibodies to either their tumor antigen or to their anti-idiotypic antibodies can be determined.
This is important in the development of more efficient pharmaceuticals.
Based on crystal structures of the antibodies and their modelled complexes with the anti-idiotypic antibody or the trisaccharide portion of N-glycolyl GM3, a model was recently proposed on how the anti-idiotypic antibody can mimic the sugar-containing antigen.
The aim is to provide additional experimental data from X-ray crystallography and MS analysis to validate or reject this hypothesis.