Researchers at Uppsala University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed an antibody that has the potential to treat various types of cancer. The researchers successfully integrated three different functionalities into the antibody, which significantly enhanced the action of T cells on cancer tumors.
The researchers have created a unique type of antibody that both targets and delivers a drug package via the antibody itself, while simultaneously activating the immune system, in what is referred to as a “3-in-1 design” for personalized immunotherapy treatments.
“We have been researching precision medicine for nearly 15 years and exploring how we can use antibodies to influence an important key protein (CD40) in the immune system. We can now demonstrate that our new antibody method works as precision medicine for cancer,” explains Sara Mangsbo, professor at the Department of Pharmacy at Uppsala University, who, along with Johan Rockberg, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, is the lead author of the study.
The drug redirects the immune system to find and target specific mutations and gene changes, known as neoantigens, which are found only in cancer cells. This is achieved by the new antibody both delivering the unique tumor-specific material directly to a particular type of immune cell and simultaneously stimulating this cell. This stimulation greatly enhances the T-cell response to the tumor.
The results show that the method works in several ways. Not only does it activate the right type of immune cells in human blood samples, but animal models also show that mice receiving the treatment had prolonged survival. At higher doses, the treatment even saved the mice from cancer. Moreover, the method is safer than previous cancer treatments the researchers have studied.
Customizing precision medicines can be both costly and time-consuming to develop.
“The advantage of our drug is that it is easy to produce on a large scale while being easily tailored to the patient’s disease or specific tumor. The medicine consists of two parts: a targeting bispecific antibody, which can be produced in large quantities in advance, and a custom peptide part, which is produced rapidly and synthetically on a small scale for a specific type of cancer. Both in terms of production cost and the short time required to tailor a peptide to a new tumor, this approach increases availability and should speed up the process of moving patients from diagnosis to treatment,” explains Johan Rockberg, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
The aim of the study was to establish a more flexible, faster, and safer treatment for cancer than those currently available. The study has already demonstrated that the method has the potential to be customized for each patient, thereby strengthening the immune system against cancer. The next step is to use the fully optimized production process to manufacture the drug candidate for further safety studies and then begin clinical trials in humans.
(ANI)