One of the big-tent biotechnology conferences opening this month focuses on a drug strategy that could be dubbed the targeted chemical warfare approach to cancer treatment.
The much-watched developers of a new drug class called antibody-drug conjugates will convene at World ADC San Francisco 2013 on Oct. 14 to swap insights about the growing number of these armed warheads of the pharmaceutical pipeline.
Among the headliners, presenting on one of the key topics at the conference, is South San Francisco-based Sutro Biopharma. Sutro sees its novel method of manufacturing biological drugs as a gateway to more precisely targeted therapies, including antibody-drug conjugates. An antibody-drug conjugate drug combines, for example, a tumor-seeking antibody with an extra payload—a toxic drug that kills the targeted cancer cells.
Interest in the tactic has intensified with the approval this year of Roche’s new treatment for metastatic breast cancer, ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla), which couples the antibody trastuzumab—the agent in Roche’s drug Herceptin—with the toxin DM1 through a linker compound from ImmunoGen. Other drug giants such as Pfizer and Abbott are also striving to develop their own antibody-drug conjugates.
But, according to Sutro, many antibody-drug conjugates contain a mixture of various forms of the intended compound, due to the challenges of current manufacturing methods. Some of the antibodies may have multiple toxic “warheads” attached, at varying positions; others may have none; and some may have the toxin attached in a spot that prevents the drug from sticking to a tumor cell, says Sutro’s chief scientific officer Trevor Hallam. As a result, as little as one percent of the toxin may actually get into the cancer cell to battle the disease.
“Ninety-nine percent is dosed to the patient and is of no use,” Hallam says. “There’s a huge opportunity to improve that.”
Sutro’s aim is to produce only the single version of an antibody-drug conjugate that is most effective against a disease. Its manufacturing method allows it to dictate consistent, pinpoint placement of toxic payloads on antibodies that are also reproduced faithfully, Hallam says. What’s more, the method permits the attachment of two different toxins to the same antibody—a potential combination therapy contained in the same drug, he says.
The need for better control of warhead placement—a simmering topic at last year’s ADC summit—is now moving to the forefront, Hallam says. He’ll be the lead speaker at an Oct. 15 panel on site-specific drug conjugation at the World ADC summit, followed by experts from Pfizer, Burlingame, CA-based Igenica, and other companies.
Sutro has radically streamlined the drug manufacturing process that originally led to the founding of the biotechnology industry—the genetic engineering of microbes and other cells that can crank out proteins, antibodies and other complex biological molecules that are tough to make by the traditional chemical synthesis that produces simpler drugs. Genentech of South San Francisco, now a division of Roche, pioneered this bioengineering method to make drugs such as its antibody trastuzumab, a breast cancer therapy.
Through genetic engineering, companies now modify algae, bacteria, and other cells to produce transportation fuels and industrial enzymes as well as drugs. But the hitch is, they can’t tinker with the cells’ DNA to the point that their engineering kills the cells. Sutro has freed itself from those restraints by pulling out of bacteria only the parts of the cell required to make proteins—a small molecular manufacturing unit called the ribosome, and some other components. Thus, Sutro can engineer tweaks in its cell extracts that would have killed a bacterial cell, because the company doesn’t need to sustain the growth of a living cell culture.
“We don’t have to worry about it,” says Hallam.
Sutro’s extracts of cell parts crank out only a single protein at a time, instead of the host of biomolecules a living cell would be constantly constructing to maintain its outer walls and its internal furniture, such as the cell nucleus. The absence of all those extra proteins in the manufacturing tank makes it easier for Sutro to isolate and purify the one protein it wants to produce, Hallam says.
The cell-free method is also quick, compared with
