Reducing hydrophobicity of homogeneous antibody-drug conjugates improves pharmacokinetics and therapeutic index.

Lyon, Robert P; Bovee, Tim D; Doronina, Svetlana O; Burke, Patrick J; Hunter, Joshua H; Neff-LaFord, Haley D; Jonas, Mechthild; Anderson, Martha E et al. · Nat Biotechnol · 2015

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The in vitro potency of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) increases with the drug-to-antibody ratio (DAR); however, ADC plasma clearance also increases with DAR, reducing exposure and in vivo efficacy. Here we show that accelerated clearance arises from ADC hydrophobicity, which can be modulated through drug-linker design. We exemplify this using hydrophilic auristatin drug linkers and PEGylated ADCs that yield uniform, high-DAR ADCs with superior in vivo performance.

Medical subject headings