Vol. 11, Special Issue 11 (2022)

Author(s):
Shivani Gupta, RK Sharma, Anju Nayak, Vidhi Gautam and Shreya Dubey

Abstract:
Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) have emerged as an important class of anticancer therapeutics. They are designed to deliver highly cytotoxic small molecules directly to cancer cells via tumor specific antibodies, therefore providing a much wider therapeutic window than conventional chemotherapy. Although chemotherapy has seen great success in treatment of cancer, but severe adverse effects derived from off-target cytotoxicity may worsen a patient’s quality of life, leads to discontinuation of medication. Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) utilize a monoclonal antibody to deliver a cytotoxic payload specifically to tumor cells, limiting exposure to healthy tissues. It consists of a cytotoxic small molecule covalently linked to a targeted protein carrier (monoclonal antibody) via a stable cleavable or non-cleavable linker. Incomplete understanding of ADCs mechanism of action, its off-target toxicities, and difficulties in the selection of suitable clinical settings such as patient selection, dosing regimen are some possible explanations for the slow clinical translation of new ADCs. However, we expect to see a generation of safer and more effective ADCs for clinical translation and commercialization in the future (Shah, 2017).