Monoclonal antibodies are mono specific antibodies that are produced by one type of immune cell that are all clones of a single parent cell. Given any protein, it is possible to create monoclonal antibodies that specifically bind to that protein or part of it called an "epitope". Treatments using monoclonal antibodies do not require the person's immune system to take an "active" role in fighting disease. Most monoclonal antibody drugs are first generated in mice and then engineered into a humanized form so that the body does not reject them as foreign. Depending on how much of the monoclonal antibody is human, these are called chimeric or humanized antibodies.

Intellect's ANTISENILIN®, proprietary anti-beta amyloid monoclonal antibody technology, utilizes a specific class of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies that we refer to as "free-end specific" antibodies. The advantage of such antibodies is that they uniquely bind to either one of the ends of the beta amyloid protein fragment which is formed from a much larger protein known as the Amyloid Precursor Protein. Free end specific antibodies are unable to bind the identical amino acid sequence of beta amyloid that exists in the Amyloid Precursor Protein. This is important because the larger protein is widespread in the body and has many important physiological functions that could be impaired by antibody binding. The principal of free end specificity is illustrated in Fig 1 below: