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Antibody drug conjugates

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Abstract

Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) have emerged as a viable option in targeted delivery of highly potent cytotoxic drugs in treatment of solid tumors. At the time of writing, only two ADCs have received regulatory approval with >40 others in clinical development. The first generation ADCs suffered from a lack of specificity in amino acid site-conjugations, yielding statistically heterogeneous stoichiometric ratios of drug molecules per antibody molecule. For the second generation ADCs, however, site-specific amino acid conjugation using enzymatic ligation, introduction of unnatural amino acids, and site-specific protein engineering hold promise to alleviate some of the current technical limitations. The rapid progress in technology platforms and antibody engineering has introduced novel linkers, site-specific conjugation chemistry, and new payload candidates that could possibly be exploited in the context of ADCs. A search using the Clinical Trial Database registry (www.clinicaltrials.gov), using the keyword ‘antibody drug conjugate’, yielded ~270 hits. The main focus of this article is to present a brief overview of the recent developments and current challenges related to ADC development.

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Acknowledgments

Helpful discussions with Dr. James Chovan are greatly appreciated.

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  1. Teva Branded Pharmaceutical Products R & D Inc, West Chester, PA, 19380, USA

    Ray Bakhtiar

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  1. Ray Bakhtiar
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Correspondence to Ray Bakhtiar.

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Bakhtiar, R. Antibody drug conjugates. Biotechnol Lett 38, 1655–1664 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2160-x

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