Novel Two-Antibody Strategy To Fight Cancer Awar...( Researchers at the University...)

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center today were awarded patent number 5,824,311 for a new technology that has shown the potential in laboratory studies to cure breast and other major cancers linked to certain abnormal genes.

Broadly viewed, the approach targets cancer-causing receptor molecules found on the surface of tumor cells with two different antibodies that bind to the molecules, fatally disabling the receptor's activity and leading to the cancer cell's death.

The specific application of the concept detailed in the patent employs a pair of antibodies against a receptor protein called p185. The p185 protein assembles into a two-protein receptor complex thought to be involved in stimulating the uncontrolled growth of a number of dangerous cancers, including those of the breast and the pancreas. Instructions for producing the p185 protein in the cell are encoded by a gene known as neu.

The recently approved anti-breast-cancer drug Herceptin also acts on the receptor produced by the neu gene but brings only one antibody to bear on it. Experiments in rodent models, however, showed that a two-antibody strategy was significantly more powerful.

"In our two-antibody studies, we were able to achieve cures of tumors as opposed to simply reducing tumor growth," says Mark I. Greene, MD, PhD, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine in whose laboratory the work was conducted. "In our experience, a single antibody against the receptor only diminishes the growth of tumor cells, whereas two antibodies disable the receptor so effectively that the cells perish."

Receptor proteins are convoluted structures with many sites -- called epitopes -- to which a wide array of antibodies can bind. It is possible for some of these sites not to be involved in the activity of the protein. Also, antibodies that bind in different ways to the same site can limit each other's effectiveness. Signif
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Contact: Franklin Hoke
hokef@mail.med.upenn.edu
215-349-5659
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
20-Oct-1998