Table 1.

IgY technologies show advantages compared to antibodies from mammals.

Area of Advantage	IgY Advantage	Reference
Animal care	Replaces the bleeding of the animals by the collection of eggs, promoting animal welfare and reducing suffering associated with painful handling	[16,17,18,19]
Biotechnology, diagnosis, and human treatment	Low-cost production	[13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,55,56]
	Antibodies against mammal conserved proteins
	High-yield of production
	High specificity
	Can be used as polyclonal, monoclonal, Fab, or scFv
	IgY Fc does not interact with Fc receptors
	IgY Fc does not activate complement
Human treatment	Toxic side-effects not yet reported; if used in pure form they can even be used in patients with allergy to eggs	[55,56]
	Passive immunization technology is applicable in newborns and adults, in immunodeficient patients and in pregnant women