Antibodies to antibodies. In other words, if a human antibody is injected into rabbits, the rabbit immune systems will recognize the human antibodies as foreign (regardless of the fact that they are antibodies) and produce antibodies against them. To the rabbit the foreign antibodies represent just another invader or nonself to be targeted and destroyed. Anti-idiotypes mimic antigens in that they are shaped to fit into the antibody’s binding site (in lock-and-key fashion). As such, anti-idiotypes can be used to create vaccines that stimulate production of antibodies to the antigen (that the anti-idiotype mimics). This confers disease resistance (to the pathogen associated with that antigen) without the risk that a vaccine using attenuated pathogens entails (i.e., that the pathogen “revives” to cause the disease).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antibodies to antibodies. In other words, if a human antibody is injected into rabbits, the rabbit immune systems will recognize the human antibodies as foreign (regardless of the fact that they are antibodies) and produce antibodies against them. To the rabbit the foreign antibodies represent just another invader or nonself to be targeted and destroyed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a"],"yoast_head":"\n