The past decade witnessed the rapid development of adult B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treatment. Beyond the development of chemotherapy regimens, immunotherapy is starting a new era with unprecedented complete remission (CR) rate. Targeting B-lineage-specific surface markers such as CD19, CD20, CD22, or CD52, immunotherapy has been demonstrating promising clinical results. Among...

The immunogenicity of therapeutic Abs limits their long-term use. The processes of complementarity-determining region grafting, resurfacing, and hyperchimerization diminish mAb immunogenicity by reducing the number of foreign residues. However, this does not prevent anti-idiotypic and anti-allotypic responses following repeated administration of cell-binding Abs. Classical studies have demonstr...

The pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) is thought to involve peripheral activation of immune cells against central nervous system (CNS) antigens and their migration across the blood-brain barrier, leading to CNS inflammation and neurodegeneration. Alemtuzumab, a humanized anti-CD52 monoclonal antibody that rapidly depletes CD52-expressing cells from the circulation, is being investigated a...

Cases of severely exacerbated CNS inflammation have been described in patients with MS under treatment with alemtuzumab, a pan-lymphocyte– depleting anti-CD52 monoclonal antibody. On the basis of the peripheral lymphocyte subset network (higher B-cell and suppressed T-cell counts) and marked clinical improvement following plasmapheresis and rituximab treatment (anti-CD20 antibody), a B-cell–dri...

Roscovitine induced apoptosis in isolated B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells of 25 patients of whom nine with relapsed and seven with fludarabine-refractory disease. It was synergistic with alemtuzumab and restored sensitivity to alemtuzumab in initially alemtuzumab-resistant samples. Observed roscovitine-induced up-regulation of CD52 surface expression may be one of the underlying mechanisms...