Antibody therapies offer promising breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer and other diseases and are attracting greater investor interest more than 20 years after their initial commercialization.
Antibodies are proteins that recognize and attach to foreign substances called antigens to warn the rest of the human immune system.
In 1975, scientists Georges Koehler and Cesar Milstein discovered how to make them in a laboratory, which later earned them the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Since then, dozens of synthetic antibodies have been developed.
New antibody treatments for chemotherapy have emerged in recent years.
More recently, a clinical trial of an antibody developed by pharmaceutical companies Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca caught the attention of leading cancer experts gathering at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago this month.
The treatment, Enhertu, has already been approved for breast cancer patients who have high levels of a protein called HER2.
The antibody also performed well in patients with smaller amounts of the protein – increasing the number of people who could benefit.
The antibody attaches itself to the surface of a cancer cell whose receptors are no longer working, and the cell then “digests” the receptors to recycle them and activate chemotherapy, explained cancer specialist William Jacot.
“We hadn’t seen progress like this in terms of survival with chemotherapy in dozens of years,” said Jacot, a professor at the Montpellier Cancer Institute in southern France.
Although antibody therapy technology has a complex production process, it is less difficult to implement than new cell therapy treatments.
Antibodies can be used in different ways to fight cancer. They can target and destroy proteins necessary for cancer cells to form or regulate the immune response.
French biotech company Inatherys is in the first phase of clinical trials with an antibody treatment for leukemia, its boss Pierre Launay said.
He said the company’s antibody will be designed as a “guided missile,” targeting a receptor that allows iron to enter cancer cells that need the substance.
The antibody then releases a toxin into the cell to destroy it.
Some antibody treatments are used preventively while others are treatments. For example, AstraZeneca’s Evusheld antibody treatment is used preventively to ward off Covid-19, while the British company GSK’s Xevudy is used as a treatment.
Treatments are also being developed for inflammatory diseases, which are also a leading cause of death.
– booming market –
The promising announcements have sparked interest beyond the scientific community and a flood of investments. French biotech ImCheck Therapeutics recently raised nearly €100 million ($106 million) for an antibody treatment in development.
Pharma giants are also willing to shell out big bucks to make sure they don’t miss out. The French company Sanofi bought the Belgian biotech company Ablynx and its mini antibodies, nanobodies, in 2018 for almost four billion euros.
Dupixent, Sanofi’s flagship immunotherapy antibody drug, brought in more than five billion euros for the pharmaceutical giant last year, and Keytruda, an oncology drug from US company MSD, generated more than $17 billion in 2021.
According to market research firm Market Data Forecast, the market could grow to $249 billion in three years.
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