Delivering more payload (high DAR ADCs)

Abstract

Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) for oncology applications are chemotherapeutic agents designed to selectively deliver cytotoxic drug payloads to neoplastic tissue. This book chapter reviews the latest approaches for high drug loaded ADCs. The primary focus of this review is related to ADC drug payload and antibody-drug bioconjugation linker selection strategies resulting in biotherapeutics with improved physicochemical properties, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics. A separate section of this chapter gives a brief overview of antibody targeted nanotherapeutics, a growing and diverse class of anti-cancer agents specifically designed for delivery of significant amounts of drug payload. New strategies to design the highly potent antibody targeted agents discussed in this chapter provide the opportunity to expand the list of drug payloads suitable for ADC applications and introduce agents with new mechanisms of action, which in turn may potentially lead to improvement in therapeutic index of the ADCs for the treatment of cancer.