ABSTRACT
Immunotherapies, as a strategy for disease management, manipulate or object to the ingredients of the immune system. Viral infections illustrate a significant threat to human health that was proven via documents in many countries. Nowadays, several immunotherapeutic approaches, as an alternative therapy, are increasingly investigated to treat infectious diseases that caused intense advances toward discovering pathogen-host immunity interactions. Novel therapeutic approaches certainly are essential to eliminate the challenges confronted by existing viral infection diseases’ prevention and treatment methods (lack of adequate efficacy, drug side-effect, and the apparition of drug resistance). As proven by evidences in the latest developments of pharmaceuticals, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), immunotherapy strategies display plentiful promise to manage the limitation. In this chapter, we explain some of the unique existing approaches to prevent and treat viral infectious disease via immunotherapies such as mAb-based therapies, vaccines, T-cell-based therapies, utilizing cytokine levels, and checkpoint inhibition as well as defensins. At the same time, its general performance has been displayed in cancer and many viral disease treatments [human immunodeficiency virus, malaria, tuberculosis, Zika virus, and coronavirus disease (COVID-19)]. Finally, immunotherapeutics’ unique features, cost, and safety will be affected by its general administration.
ABSTRACT
Historically, passive immunotherapy is an approved approach for protecting and treating humans against various diseases when other alternative therapeutic options are unavailable. Human polyclonal antibodies (hpAbs) can be made from convalescent human donor serum, although it is considered limited due to pandemics and the urgent requirement. Additionally, polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) could be generated from animals, but they may cause severe immunoreactivity and, once "humanized," may have lower neutralization efficiency. Transchromosomic bovines (TcBs) have been developed to address these concerns by creating robust neutralizing hpAbs, which are useful in preventing and/or curing human infections in response to hyperimmunization with vaccines holding adjuvants and/or immune stimulators over an extensive period. Unlike other animal-derived pAbs, potent hpAbs could be promptly produced from TcB in large amounts to assist against an outbreak scenario. Some of these highly efficacious TcB-derived antibodies have already neutralized and blocked diseases in clinical studies. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has numerous variants classified into variants of concern (VOCs), variants of interest (VOIs), and variants under monitoring. Although these variants possess different mutations, such as N501Y, E484K, K417N, K417T, L452R, T478K, and P681R, SAB-185 has shown broad neutralizing activity against VOCs, such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron variants, and VOIs, such as Epsilon, Iota, Kappa, and Lambda variants. This article highlights recent developments in the field of bovine-derived biotherapeutics, which are seen as a practical platform for developing safe and effective antivirals with broad activity, particularly considering emerging viral infections such as SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Zika, human immunodeficiency virus type 1, and influenza A virus. Antibodies in the bovine serum or colostrum, which have been proved to be more protective than their human counterparts, are also reviewed.