Quiz: Immunotherapy: How Antibodies Can Be Used to Treat Diseases

1. Match the terms with the correct description from the table. Select the letter representing the right description for each term.

Antibody

Antigen

Monoclonal antibody

Target antigen

Bispecific antibody

Antigen-binding site

Immunotherapy

2. Which of the following statements is true?

3. Which of the antibodies below can bind to cell #1 AND cell #6 but no other cells?

4. Monoclonal antibody drugs can also be used to treat infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, several monoclonal antibody treatments were developed to treat the original virus strains. With the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as Omicron, the effectiveness of these monoclonal antibody drugs decreased significantly, which resulted in the FDA gradually revoking all their authorizations. Given what you know about how antibodies work, can you explain why the monoclonal antibody drugs treating COVID became less effective with the emergence of new virus variants?

5. What is usually the first step of the antibody drug development process?

6. In your own words, describe the difference between monoclonal antibodies and bispecific antibodies.