Dual Action Antibodies Versus Cancer
From the MIT Technology Review, a look at another form of first generation immune therapy aimed at cancer: "Last year marked a first for engineered antibodies - the European Commission approved a new cancer drug called Removab (catumaxomab), an antibody specially designed to grab both cancer cells and immune cells in such a way that the immune cell can kill the cancer cell. (The drug is undergoing testing for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.) Now a handful of similarly complex molecules, dubbed 'bispecific antibodies' for their ability to target two things at once, are in clinical trials. The two arms of these antibodies work together in different ways to treat cancer or other diseases, by bringing together two types of cells, as with Removab, by targeting two different types of receptors on the surface of a cell, or even using one arm to deliver drugs to specific cells targeted by the other. ... While the concept of bispecific antibodies has been around for decades, the approach has only recently shown clinical success. The field has been driven forward by new ways of designing and making the antibodies, which take advantage of advances in protein engineering, as well as the success of single-target antibodies, such as herceptin, that are already on the market." This is an example of the way in which targeting technologies and new strategies from the biotechnology labs are slowly filtering into the old school drug development pipeline.
Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=24970