Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity

Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), also referred to as antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, is a mechanism of cell-mediated immune defense whereby an effector cell of the immune system kills a target cell, whose membrane-surface antigens have been bound by specific antibodies.

In recent literature, its importance in regards to treatment of cancerous cells and deeper insight into its deceptively complex pathways have been topics of increasing interest to medical researchers.

The typical ADCC involves activation of NK cells by antibodies in a multi-tiered progression of immune control.

Several laboratory methods exist for determining the efficacy of antibodies or effector cells in eliciting ADCC.

After early clinical trials involving activation through cytokines produced poor results and severe toxicological side effects, more recent studies have produced success in regulating metastatic tumors using interleukin proteins to activate the NK cell.

[6] The effects against solid tumors of trastuzumab and rituximab monoclonal antibodies have been shown in experiments with mice to involve ADCC as an important mechanism of therapeutic action.

[7] In the clinic, the FcgRIII 158V/F polymorphism interfere with the ability to generate ADCC responses in vitro during trastuzumab treatment.

ADCC is also important in the use of vaccines, as creation of antibodies and the destruction of antigens introduced to the host body are crucial to building immunity through small exposure to viral and bacterial proteins.

Examples of this include vaccines targeting repeats in toxins (RTX) that are structurally crucial to a wide variety of erythrocyte-lysing bacteria, described as hemolysins.