Herceptin Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Herceptin, including details on side-effects, breast cancer, treatment, therapy.

Gene therapy using adenovirus-mediated full-length anti-HER-2 antibody for HER-2 overexpression cancers.

Jiang M, Shi W, Zhang Q, Wang X, Guo M, Cui Z, Su C, Yang Q, Li Y, Sham J, Liu X, Wu M, Qian Q

Laboratory of Viral and Gene Therapy, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgical Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.

PURPOSE: Therapeutic monoclonal antibody is increasingly applied in many clinical applications, although complicated technologies and high cost still limit their wide applications. To obtain the sustained serum antibody concentration with one single injection and lower the cost of antibody protein therapy, an adenovirus-mediated full-length antibody gene therapy was developed. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Full-length antibody light-chain and heavy-chain sequences were linked with internal ribosome entry site and constructed into adenoviral vector under the control of cytomegalovirus promoter. Antibody expression in vitro and in vivo were tested with ELISA, and its antitumor efficacy was evaluated in SKOV-3-inoculated nude mice. RESULTS: Ad5-TAb-generated anti-HER-2 antibody presented the similar binding specificity with commercial trastuzumab. A single i.v. injection of 2 x 10(9) plaque-forming units of Ad5-TAb per mouse resulted in not only a sustained over 40 microg/mL serum antibody level for at least 4 weeks but also significant tumor elimination in the ovarian cancer SKOV-3-inoculated nude mice. CONCLUSIONS: An in vivo full-length antibody gene delivery system allows continuous production of a full-length antibody at high concentration after a single administration. Bioactive antibody macromolecules can be generated via gene transfer in vivo. All the data suggest that this novel adenovirus-mediated antibody gene delivery can be used for the exploitation of antibodies, without being hampered by the sophisticated antibody manufacture techniques and high cost, and, furthermore, can shorten the duration and reduce the expense of antibody developments.

Published 25 October 2006 in Clin Cancer Res, 12(20): 6179-85.
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