Introduction

Fueled by the success of therapeutic antibodies over the past decade, research into antibody engineering has expanded significantly. Early engineering work concentrated primarily on making the therapeutic tolerable to the human immune system (e.g. humanization), the generation of antibodies (e.g. via the use of transgenic mice, and phage and ribosome display technologies), and novel antibody formats (e.g. diabodies and scFv [singlechain variable region fragment]) (Figure 1; Box 1). Although studies in these areas continue, new areas have blossomed — so much so that they cannot all be encompassed by a short review. This review covers selected subjects from 2001 onwards; for subjects not covered here, a selection of recent reviews are available covering therapeutic antibodies in general [1–4].