Anti-rat angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE, CD143) monoclonal antibodies and uses thereof

摘要

It was demonstrated previously that mAb 9 B 9 to ACE accumulated selectively in the rat lung after systemic injection and thus could be used as a powerful tool for immunotargeting therapeutic agents/genes to the lung microvasculature. The current invention generated novel set of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to rat ACE in order to enhance the repertoire of mAbs suitable for targeting drugs/genes to the rat lung. Provided are methods used to characterize the ability of these mAbs to target ACE in vitro and to the lung endothelium in vivo. The anti-rat ACE mAbs of the present invention demonstrated highly efficient and selective accumulation in the lung.