Ablynx's partner shows that a nanobody can elicit superior anti-tumour efficacy compared to conventional monoclonal antibody approaches
Ablynx noted that a paper on a novel tetrameric Nanobody® agonist (TAS266) targeting Death Receptor 5 (DR5), a key receptor target on cancer cells across a number of tumour types, was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in Chicago by Novartis. The ability of TAS266 to efficiently 'cross-link' DR5 receptor targets, apparently not achievable with conventional monoclonal antibodies, results in the controlled death of cancer cells.
The abstract summarizes the results of the pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo studies of a tetravalent anti-DR5 Nanobody in an oncology setting. TAS266 was shown to elicit sustained tumour regressions in multiple tumour xenograft models, including a patient-derived primary pancreatic tumour model that is insensitive to a conventional anti-DR5 agonist antibody. Also, compared to some of the other therapeutic agonists against DR5 that have been developed and that have been clinically evaluated, TAS266 proved to be up to 1000-fold more potent in tumour cell death assays.
In view of this, the authors of the abstract conclude that "TAS266 has the potential for superior clinical activity in settings insensitive to the conventional therapeutic approaches to DR5."
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