Production of a bivalent monoclonal antibody as a potent new immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer (360G-Wellcome-200970_Z_16_Z)

Pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer in the world and is almost always fatal. More recently immunotherapy (stimulation of the patient’s immune response to recognised and kill their own cancer) has shown show great promise in other cancers. This makes identification of new targets and approaches for pancreatic cancer very important. Many different sugars are attached to proteins and lipids to enhance their function but in cancer they are significantly altered making them specific targets for immunotherapy. Prof Durrant and her group at the University of Nottingham have developed monoclonal antibodies (mAbs: protein drugs) that specifically target the sugars expressed on pancreatic cancers. These mAbs can directly kill cancer cells and can also stimulate the patient’s own immune response to prevent the cancer from coming back. Although, our sugars are excellent targets as they have high expression on cancers and extremely low expression on a very limited number of normal tissues, the normal expression can still lead to side effects. To reduce these side effects, without compromising efficacy, we will combine two mAbs allowing us to target two different sugars expressed on cancers but not on normal cells. This should lead to a new therapy for pancreatic cancer.