A mechanistic tumor penetration model to guide antibody drug conjugate design

PLoS One. 2015 Mar 18;10(3):e0118977. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118977. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) represent novel anti-cancer modalities engineered to specifically target and kill tumor cells expressing corresponding antigens. Due to their large size and their complex kinetics, these therapeutic agents often face heterogeneous distributions in tumors, leading to large untargeted regions that escape therapy. We present a modeling framework which includes the systemic distribution, vascular permeability, interstitial transport, as well as binding and payload release kinetics of ADC-therapeutic agents in mouse xenografts. We focused, in particular, on receptor dynamics such as endocytic trafficking mechanisms within cancer cells, to simulate their impact on tumor mass shrinkage upon ADC administration. Our model identified undesirable tumor properties that can impair ADC tissue homogeneity, further compromising ADC success, and explored ADC design optimization scenarios to counteract upon such unfavorable intrinsic tumor tissue attributes. We further demonstrated the profound impact of cytotoxic payload release mechanisms and the role of bystander killing effects on tumor shrinkage. This model platform affords a customizable simulation environment which can aid with experimental data interpretation and the design of ADC therapeutic treatments.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cell Transformation, Neoplastic
  • Drug Design*
  • Humans
  • Immunoconjugates / metabolism
  • Immunoconjugates / therapeutic use*
  • Kinetics
  • Mice
  • Models, Biological*
  • Neoplasms / drug therapy*
  • Neoplasms / immunology
  • Neoplasms / metabolism
  • Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays

Substances

  • Immunoconjugates

Grants and funding

The authors would like to state that Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research provided support in the form of salaries for authors CV, BG, GH, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.