Today it is clear that treating cancer with monoclonal antibodies is one of the greatest advancements in oncology. Just over a decade ago, the approval of Rituxan marked  the birth  of a multi-billion dollar market, as 8 additional antibodies have since joined Rituxan. The market is currently dominated by a specific flavor of antibodies termed “naked” antibodies, which represent a fraction of the large amount of  different antibody flavors. In contrast to naked antibodies, other flavors have yet to reach maturity,  although some of these are making their way steadily to the center stage. All these approaches have one thing in common: They rely on antibodies’ exquisite ability to recognize and bind a target in a very specific manner. One of these approaches, represented by Immunogen (IMGN) and Seattle Genetics (SGEN), deals with Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which are constructed by linking antibodies to a drug-payload. The antibody serves as a guiding system by guiding the drug to tumors, and releases it inside cancer cells. In addition, there is a lot of activity in developing additional antibody-based therapies that involve linking other types of substances to antibodies. For example, one possibility for boosting an antibody’s potency is linking it to a radioactive molecule like in GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Bexxar case.  

In biotech, just like in other investment fields, it is important to recognize market trends, and identify emerging technologies and concepts. The problem with such cutting-edge technologies is that, regardless of how promising they seem, there is always an unknown period of incubation, in which the  technology migrates from basic research to the industry. If we take the whole antibody industry as an example, it took almost a quarter of a century from the scientific breakthrough that gave rise to monoclonal antibodies, to the approval of Rituxan. In the case of ADCs, several encouraging results may imply that the incubation period is finally over, although drug development is always characterized with a high level of uncertainty. As someone who has been following the antibody market for quite some time now, I assumed that ADCs such as T-DM1 will represent the majority of clinical breakthroughs in the coming years. However, preliminary results from a small clinical trial that were published in ASH three months ago, showed that there is a unique platform which can generate highly potent antibodies, without even linking them to drugs or other effector molecules. In fact, this platform gave rise to one of the most potent antibodies ever tried on human beings -  Micromet’s (MITI) MT103.

 

Micromet is a German-based company that developed a unique antibody-based platform termed BiTE^® (Bispecific T Cell Engagers). BiTE antibodies are unique in the sense that they combine two approaches that have been investigated for years without any meaningful success. I discussed the clinical activity of MT103 in brief here and intend to do so more thoroughly in the second part of this article.