However, trials of the antibody drug are about to start in humans, meaning, if it works, it could become available in just a few years.
Other notes: CDX-011 is a monoclonal antibody drug conjugate.
Encouraging data are also expected this weekend for an approach in which potent doses of chemotherapy are linked to antibody drug such as Roche's Herceptin to deliver chemo more directly to the tumor like a guided missile, to reduce the toxic side effects of chemo.
Agents such T-DM1 are called antibody-drug conjugates and they are the focus of intense interest in the pharmaceutical industry.
Novartis' promising Muckle-Wells drug--its antibody against interleukin-1, which it first aimed at arthritis--was one of the first drugs to benefit from Fishman's new testing regimen.
The combination will be used to develop antibody-drug conjugate anticancer therapeutics.
FORBES: Cancer Drug Partnerships: Immunogen to Collaborate with Lilly, Amgen Partners with Watson
The drug is a bioengineered antibody to a crucial natural protein called Rank-ligand that appears to play a central role in initiating the bone breakdown process.
Developed using technology from partner Seattle Genetics, the drug is a monoclonal antibody containing a toxic chemotherapy that attacks cancer cells if they express glycoprotein NMB, or GPNMB.
FORBES: Celldex Therapeutics Breast Cancer Drug Shows Strong Results In Some Patients
Tysabri, by contrast, will probably never face true generic competition, because it is a type of drug called a monoclonal antibody that will be much harder to produce cheaply.
FORBES: In Wise Move, Biogen Spends $3.25 Billion For Rest Of Tysabri. Now What Happens To Elan?
Kadcyla, known as an "antibody-drug conjugate, " represents "a completely new way" to treat HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer, said Dr. Hal Barron, chief medical officer and head of global product development for Genentech.
"We currently have more than 25 antibody-drug conjugates in our pipeline and hope this promising approach will help us deliver more medicines to fight other cancers in the future, " Barron said in a statement.
Instead of turning off VEGF receptors as Sugen's drug does, Genentech's antibody latches onto VEGF itself to stop it from docking with a receptor.
Now into this gloom comes a new type of drug, called an anti-CD3 antibody, that aims for the first time to delay or prevent development of the devastating disease by arresting the immune system's attack on pancreatic islet cells.
That is why armed antibodies are becoming popular with big drug companies hoping to get something out of their cancer antibody investment.
This follows on the heels of Pfizer out-licensing another oncology drug, CP-870-893, an anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody, to VLST Corporation.
Lucentis, approved in June for wet AMD, is essentially a fragment of the monoclonal antibody that was used to make the company's colon cancer drug Avastin.
Earlier this year, Pfizer, which is in the lead with an antibody trageting nerve growth factor one (NGF-1), announced that the Food and Drug Administration had told it to put clinical trials of its drug on hold.
应用推荐