# Talk:Nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies

Could somebody fix the table, please? The borders are not correct. NCurse work 14:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I tried several different things and wasn't able to fix it. I'll try asking at the Village Pump. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, never mind, I used a quite inelegant solution. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger of -mab stems: -amab, -emab, -imab, -omab, -umab, -ximab, -zumab, and -axomab was proposed by BlakeCS  on 30 December 2006.  I agree that this information could be placed in a single table in this, the Nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies article.  --Bejnar 19:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that we have the table, is there anything to do but redirect them? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
No, I think redirection is in order at this point. — Swpb talk contribs 06:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Done. — Swpb talk contribs 08:08, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Stems what I've made up is: murine hybrids: -exomab, -ixomab, -oxomab, and -uxomab. Two-letter combinations for targets: -o(s). Three-letter combinations for targets: -mu(l)- (muscular). Four-letter combinations for targets: -neu(r)- (nervous system), -tox(a)- (toxin), -fu(ng)- (fungal). -xomab means a murine hybrid. BlakeCS 05:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this page might be more accessible to beginners if several more examples were given and analyzed. This nomenclature is unique, and it takes a while to get your mind around it.
A linguist might say that these words are agglutinative, with a string of components but no definite stem (if -mab is viewed as a stem, then words might be called synthetic). Whole languages can be agglutinative, like spoken French or like the Algonkian languages of North America, or synthetic like Latin, Sanskrit, or Turkish.
Either way, they don't work like English, and the learner needs all the help he can get.
Or maybe this elderly physician just needs to retire!
Bob Richmond (talk) 00:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)Bob Richmond

Expand on targets: no information whether the mab is therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic
 Done --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 18:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Short linguistic discussion on infix/suffix/stem confusion
 Done in International Nonproprietary Name --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 13:26, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Include history section [1] [2]
 Done --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Explain affixes "under discussion": -n(e)-, -xizu-
--ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Will be adding comments later tonight. Reviewer: JFW | T@lk 20:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)


### Initial comments
Introduction:
The reader who doesn't know what monoclonal antibodies are should perhaps be introduced to the concept in 2-3 brief sentences. Difficult, but not impossible.
 Done. Well, the sentences are not really brief. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Do we need to delve into the fragments in the intro? It needs quite a lot of context to be understandable, and might be better in the body somewhere.
 Done. Worked into History section. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
In the table, some items in the list are under discussion "as of February 2010". Have any conclusions been reached, or is this still the state of affairs?
There don't seem to be any publications newer than ref #2 which is from Dec 2009; so it should actually be "as of December 2009" unless anything new crops up. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Components:
Antibodies from hamsters (theoretically -e-) and primates (-i-) have never been assigned INNs. This might benefit from rephrasing, such as: "No INN has ever been requested for antibodies from hamsters [...]". Do any sources explain why they were anticipated, and why none were assigned?
Rephrased. I'm pretty sure I know the answers to your questions. Will look for sources. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Tough one. These animals are more or less closely related to humans (see Euarchontoglires), making immunogenicity less of a problem, and they are easy to keep as laboratory animals. But this doesn't explain why there is no substem for rabbits. Regarding your second question: Mice seem to be the most commonly used hosts, presumably for practical reasons (small, breed quickly, well known biological properties). It isn't impossible, though, that primate mabs will receive INNs in the future. However, that's all guesswork; I didn't find any good sources. Will ask at WT:PHARM. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
It might help if the image were modified to show the CDRs more clearly, as not all readers will know what these are and why they matter. 
Here is a draft. Any suggestions? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 11:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
Draft looks OK but would need to be modified for each subtype as in the current version. Perhaps it's just the caption that needs to be clearer where the CDRs are. JFW | T@lk 15:27, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 Done. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 13:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
With regards to the "prefix" section, it could be pointed out that different commercial antibodies for exactly the same target (don't know if this has happened) would have different prefixes to distinguish them. Unsure if the sources might help here.
 Done. Good idea. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
With regards to "additional words", I think a few examples would be immensely helpful here.
 Done. The last two "Old convention" bullets are now somewhat redundant. Do you think I can remove them? (An example of the type isotope + mab [Technetium (99mTc) pintumomab] could be added to the "additional words" section"). --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 17:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
History:
Should there be a sentence or two about the history of monoclonal antibodies an sich? This will place the nomenclature discussions in historical context. Stern & Herrmann seems a reasonable source for this.
I don't have access to the full text. Perhaps Monoclonal antibody#Discovery helps; I'll have a look. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 Done. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
An interesting article! Let me know how you get on with the above points. I expect there might be one or two other small things, on the whole it looks good. JFW | T@lk 23:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Done, more or less. I am still looking for a source saying that mabs were discovered in multiple myeloma (nothing found, removed sentence --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)), and have more or less given up on the question why there are no hamster mabs.
Could you comment on my question whether to remove/merge the redundant examples? Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we need to have a separate section with examples if we're already providing examples in context.
Will hopefully do a final review later tonight. JFW | T@lk 21:01, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
Things definitely looking good. You have clearly followed up my recommendations. I think that despite the slight redundancy, the "examples" section still enhances the article, and should probably remain.
The use of the {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}} templates means that it is slightly more different to force all references into a consistent format (e.g. spaces vs semicolons between authors). I have no immediate solution for this, and it is one of the reasons why I personally generate my citations templates by other means. I don't think this is a breaking point for WP:WIAGA.
I will give the article a final read tomorrow and probably pass for GA at that point. JFW | T@lk 23:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


### Last few bits
A quick final readthrough has identified the following two points:

I struggled to differentiate variable regions and CDRs. Would it be possible to expand on this very briefly?
Hm. I've added a bit; not sure whether this helps. File:Complementarity determining regions.PNG might clarify things but would make the layout look rather overcrowded. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 11:30, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
If you are going to rely on {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}}, would it be possible to make all other references consistent? By this I mean using the same style for the names of the authors (comma after the surname, semicolon after the initials). I personally favour the Surname IN, Othersurname AB. format, but as long as things are consistent it's fine. Hate to harp on about this, but it technically falls under WP:WIAGA 1b.
I don't think the format has something to do with {{cite doi}} vs {{citation}} but rather with the use of parameters (authors= vs last1= | first1= etc). I prefer using the latter, resulting in Surname, IN; Othersurname, AB, because it's better machine readable and I can see no disadvantage for human readers. Hope that's fine with you.
That's fine. I think both the templates use the citation bot, which formats references differently from Diberri's template filler. As long as things are consistent, it's all good. JFW | T@lk 20:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Ref #18 only gives "AGN" as an author, and I'm not sure whether I've placed the "Jr." correctly in #4, but apart from that I think I've caught everything. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 11:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
That's good. We may never know who AGN was. JFW | T@lk 20:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Otherwise passable without a question. JFW | T@lk 10:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

 Passed GA assessment. Well done and particular commendations for your patience! JFW | T@lk 20:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your review! I enjoyed your constructive suggestions, and the article is now definitely better and more complete than two weeks ago. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 21:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Could I just point out that this article is not about the nomenclature of monoclonal antibodies? It is about the nomenclature of *therapeutic* monoclonal antibodies. A monoclonal antibody can be called anything you like. It is only when a monoclonal antibody which is intended to become a drug reaches the stage of development where an INN is required that the system so tortuously described in the article kicks in.

The USAN 2019 Naming Policy states that "[t]he target infix places information about the action or use of the antibody in the name", which is in conflict with the currently unsourced text in the article. I have yet to find any information from WHO literature. I will remove those paragraph if there are no evidence otherwise. -Mys_721tx (talk) 18:28, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

"These are officially called substems and sometimes erroneously infixes, even by the USAN Council itself." is an assertion not existing in the source and should be removed. -Mys_721tx (talk) 19:02, 6 December 2020 (UTC)