[Introduction to medical abzymology: the present and the prospect]

The last decade of the 20th century was marked by appearance of a new field at the interfaces between modern immunology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and pathology. The name of this field, abzymology, descends from the terms "antibody" and "enzymes". The new direction is concerned with obtaining and study of abzymes, catalytic antibodies. This new class of biocatalyzers may be obtained artificially, by immunization of animals with transition state analogs, or by induction of anti-idiotypic antibodies to enzymes. By now, these approaches have allowed biocatalytic conversions of dosens of biochemical reactions using antibodies. Many of them do not have natural enzymatic "analogs". This have provided a real possibility to obtain "catalytic vaccines", moleculas of immunoglobulins, capable of destroying such harmful conpounds as pesticides, toxic agents, and narcotics. Abzymes may also be obtained from human and animal serum in various pathologic conditions. Nowadays it is obvious that the highest level of catalytic activity is observed in autoimmune conditions. Most likely, this aspect of abzymology may be considered from the point of view of prospects in diagnostics, as well as to be one of the aspects of studying abzymology.