Antibody drug conjugate bioinformatics: Drug delivery through the letterbox

Abstract

Antibodies appear to be the first line of defence in the adaptive immune response of vertebrates and thereby are involved in a multitude of biochemical mechanisms, such as regulation of infection, autoimmunity, and cancer. It goes without saying that a full understanding of antibody function is required for the development of novel antibody-interacting drugs. These drugs are the Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), which are a new type of targeted therapy, used for example for cancer. They consist of an antibody (or antibody fragment such as a single-chain variable fragment [scFv]) linked to a payload drug (often cytotoxic). Because of the targeting, the side effects should be lower and give a wider therapeutic window. Overall, the underlying principle of ADCs is to discern the delivery of a drug that is cytotoxic to a target that is cancerous, hoping to increase the antitumoural potency of the original drug by reducing adverse effects and side effects, such as toxicity of the cancer target. This is a pioneering field that employs state-of-the-art computational and molecular biology methods in the fight against cancer using ADCs. © 2013 Dimitrios Vlachakis and Sophia Kossida.