Amplifying tumor recognition and drug susceptibility by multivalent ApDC assembly to combat with tumor cell heterogeneity.

Abstract

Molecular target-based therapeutics like antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have been proved effective in clinical trials. However, tumor cell heterogeneity and weak-positive expression of tumor antigens impeded the clinical efficiency on some patients. Bispecific and biparatopic antibodies based targeted therapies, provide an alternative mode to enhance the targeting efficiency, however the flexible construction and synergistic effect remained challenges. Here, we took aptamer-drug conjugates (ApDCs) as a paradigm of targeted therapy and put forward a programmable method to construct multivalent and multi-specific assembly of ApDCs (mApDCs), which amplified the efficiency on target-initiated tumor cell recognition-internalization and cytotoxicity. Meanwhile, these mApDCs possessed high specificity on targeted antigens, enhanced tumor accumulation, prolonged retention and improved tumor growth inhibition on different tumor types both in "multivalent" pattern and "multi-specific" pattern. This study thus provides a programable strategy to develop targeted therapies to combat with tumor cell heterogeneity and overcome resistance from weak expression of tumor antigens.