Strategies to boost antibody selectivity in oncology

Abstract

Antibodies in oncology are being equipped with toxic cargoes and effector functions that can kill cells at very low concentrations. A key challenge is that most targets on cancer cells are also present on at least some healthy cells. Shared targets can result in off-tumor binding and compromise the safety and potential of therapeutic candidates. In this review, we survey strategies that can help direct biologics to cancer sites more selectively. These strategies are becoming increasingly feasible thanks to advances in molecular design and engineering. The objective is to create therapeutics that exploit changes in cancer and leverage the human body infrastructure, enabling therapeutics that discriminate not just self from non-self but diseased from healthy tissue.

Keywords: antibodies; antibody–drug conjugate; antigen; biologics; cancer; multispecifics; tumor microenvironment.