Although conventional antibodies serve as the foundation for highly successful research, diagnostic and therapeutic tools, they do have their disadvantages such as stability over a narrow pH and temperature range and may not be able to access particular active sites on proteins.
These disadvantages might not hinder your research results, but a smaller-sized single domain antibody can increase therapeutic efficacy. A study from the Annals of Medicine, about the challenges in monoclonal antibody-based therapies, pointed out how the current manufacturing and purification processes of monoclonal antibodies cause limitations in the production capacity of therapeutic antibodies, which leads to an increase in cost (1). In a study by Vanlandschoot et al. (2), the advantages of sdAbs were reviewed in relation to their possible therapeutic applications against various viral diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1), influenza A virus, reparatory syncytial virus (RSV), are discussed. View here. Such studies culminated in the first FDA-approved sdAb against von Willebrand factor to treat the blood disease Acquired Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (3).