Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that may develop with the help of B cells. One piece of evidence that suggests this is the ability of B cell depletion therapy to reduce MS-related CNS inflammation. Since T helper cells (especially Th17) are believed to mediate MS development, studies that determine how B cells influence T helper cells are important in understanding MS pathogenesis.
Antibody-based drugs are developed as an immunotherapeutic approach to treat different types of cancer. An important step in the antibody drug–development process is the use of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) assays due to this mechanism of action for most antibody drugs. These assays require the use of effector cells, and those used most often are natural killer (NK) cells obtained from human donors and engineered cells (NK-92 and Jurkate T cells).
