The Catalytic Antibody Approach to Amyloid Aggregation

Today's paper is authored by the Covalent Bioscience science team, and is an overview of the science underlying their catalytic antibody (or catabody) approach to clearing amyloids of various sorts from aged tissues. It isn't open access, unfortunately, but the paper is, as usual, available to the world thanks to the ethical civil disobedience of the Sci-Hub team. Amyloids are solid deposits formed by one of the very small number of proteins in the body that can become misfolded or otherwise altered in ways that cause other molecules of the same protein to also alter in the same way. These errant proteins aggregate into structures that are surrounded by a halo of damaging biochemistry that degrades cell function or kills cells, and, once started, this aggregation can spread through tissues over time. The Covalent Bioscience team believes that natural catalytic antibodies are the primary way by which our biochemistry tries to clear out amyloids - but evidently, amyloid generation overwhelms this mechanism as aging progresses. Catalytic antibodies act as catalysts for reactions that break down amyloids. Because one catalytic antibody can do this for many amyloid molecules, they have the potential to be a highly efficient basis for therapy. The process of development is to identify natural catalytic antibodies specific to a target amyloid, improve on their structure and function, establish ways to manufacture these improved versions at scale, and then deliver them in larg...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs