Anti-infective antibodies--reviving an old paradigm

Antibody therapy for infections has a long history and the development of monoclonal antibody technologies, and of increasingly ingenious techniques for making these products, has brought about a major revival in interest. In this paper the field is reviewed with particular emphasis on two topics: the role that antibodies may have in combating pandemic flu; and the prospects for giving, as a food, antibodies derived from the ovalbumin of transgenic chicken eggs, as a prophylactic against diarrhoeal disease.