Biologic therapies for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a disorder characterized by a complicated chronic inflammatory response that is resistant to corticosteroid therapy. As a result, there is a critical need for effective anti-inflammatory medications to treat people with COPD. Using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to inhibit cytokines and chemokines or their receptors could be a potential approach to treating the inflammatory component of COPD.

The therapeutic potential that some of these mAbs might have in COPD is reviewed.

No mAb directed against cytokines or chemokines has shown any therapeutic impact in COPD patients, apart from mAbs targeting the IL-5 pathway that appear to have statistically significant, albeit weak, effect in patients with eosinophilic COPD. This may reflect the complexity of COPD, in which no single cytokine or chemokine has a dominant role. Because the umbrella term COPD encompasses several endotypes with diverse underlying processes, mAbs targeting specific cytokines or chemokines should most likely be evaluated in limited and focused populations.