Anti-idiotypic vaccines consist of antibodies that have three-dimensional immunogenic regions, termed idiotopes, that consist of protein sequences that bind to cell receptors.
Idiotopes are aggregated into idiotypes specific to their target antigen.
[1] To produce an anti-idiotypic vaccine, antibodies that bind tumor-associated antigens (TAA) are isolated and injected into mice.
To the murine immune system, the TAA antibodies are antigens and cause an immunogenic reaction producing murine antibodies that can bind to the "TAA idiotype" and is said to be "anti-idiotypic".
Because the antibody produced using the "anti-idiotypic" process closely resembles the original epitope of the antigen, these antibodies can be used to induce immune responses from cellular to antibody-antigen for a given antigen, e. g., TAA, when administered as a vaccine to a human.