Development of more efficacious antibodies for medical therapy and diagnosis

Two procedures for improving the efficacy of medically important antibodies are described. The first procedure is designed to reduce the immunogenicity of nonhuman antibodies to the barest minimum--the "humanization" is accomplished by transplanting only the specificity-determining residues of the nonhuman antibody onto a human antibody template. The second procedure is designed to permit the easy production of multispecific/multivalent antibodies via heterodimer formation of electrostatically complementary Fc regions.