Delivering a powerful payload directly into cancer cells

Unlike conventional chemotherapy treatments, which can damage healthy cells, antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) are targeted medicines that aim to deliver chemotherapy agents to cancer cells.¹ ADCs deliver the chemotherapy via a linker attached to a monoclonal antibody (mAb) that binds to a specific target expressed on cancer cells. After binding to the target (cancer protein or receptor), the ADC releases a cytotoxic drug into the cancer cell.¹

‘Fully human’ mAbs, which have been engineered to contain protein sequences encoded by human immunoglobulin genes, are an ideal delivery platform for ADCs.¹ They are designed to be highly targeted and cell-specific, have a long circulating half-life and offer minimal immunogenicity.¹ The chemical ‘linkers’ that join together the antibodies and cytotoxic drugs are highly stable to prevent cleaving (splitting) before the ADC enters the tumour.¹ The anticancer drugs (or ‘payloads’) have an ability to penetrate the tumour and cause cell death either by damaging the DNA of cancer cells or by preventing new cancer cells from forming and spreading.¹

Across multiple global collaboration agreements with Daiichi Sankyo, we are committed to developing novel ADCs as targeted cancer medicines for the potential treatment of tumours that may be driven by expression of specific proteins, such as HER2 and TROP2.

References

1. Peters C, Brown S. Antibody-drug conjugates as novel anti-cancer chemotherapeutics. Biosci Rep. 2015;35(4):e00225. Published 2015 Jul 14. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.febslet.2013.10.015/full. Accessed July 2020.