Intrabody (protein)

As intrabody (of intracellular, and antibodies ) refers to in biochemistry and immunology, an antibody that binds to intracellular proteins within the cell.

Properties

As there is no effective mechanism to transport antibody into a cell, it is necessary that the antibody in question is expressed as a recombinant protein in the target cell. This can be achieved by gene therapy. Therefore refers to such antibodies which have been modified for intracellular activity as intrabodies, even if they are produced in bacteria, or other cells that are not the target organisms. The term may thus be used for different forms of the protein targeting. The antibodies may remain in the cytoplasm, have a nuclear localization signal, or be introduced by a KDEL - sequence during translation by translocating inside the endoplasmic reticulum after expression. Since antibodies are normally secreted, the signal sequences have to be adjusted by a protein design. For this purpose one uses single-chain antibody, changing the VL domains of the antibody to improve its stability, selected antibodies more resistant to intracellular degradation mechanisms, or produced fusion proteins with protein tags (such as the maltose binding protein ), the intracellular stability are. Such optimizations stable intrabodies were generated which have different properties and may be able to be used against hepatitis B, avian influenza, prion diseases, inflammation, Parkinson 's disease and Huntington's disease.