Cancer-fighting antibodies inject chemo directly into tumor cells, upping effectiveness

By attaching a chemotherapy drug to an antibody, doctors are able to deliver more potent cancer-fighting medicines directly into tumor cells, all while causing fewer side effects.

The chemotherapy-antibody combinations, known as antibody drug conjugates, have been described as both heat-seeking missiles and Trojan horses for cancer cells, designed to specifically home in on a patient’s tumor cells and trick them into engulfing the antibodies, along with their deadly payload.

The approach isn’t entirely new: The first antibody drug conjugate was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 to treat acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer. Since then, other approvals have followed, for treatments targeting cancers of the breast, lung, cervix and ovaries, and more than 100 are in clinical development, according to a review in the journal Cancers.

Oncologists, however, have become increasingly enthusiastic about the treatments in recent years, as researchers have pinpointed new, better targets that allow the drugs to take down cancer cells with more accuracy.