Conditions of tumor-associated antigens as a proper target for therapeutic antibodies against solid cancers

Since the success of rituximab and trastuzumab for treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and breast cancer, respectively, a huge therapeutic potential of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) was realized and development of therapeutic mAbs has been widely tried against various cancers. However, the successful examples are still limited and therapeutic mAbs are not yet available for the majority of human cancers. We established a procedure for comprehensive identification of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) through the extensive isolation of human mAbs that may become therapeutic. Thirty-twoTAAs have been identified and 555 mAbs that bound to one of the TAAs have been isolated to date. Now we are trying to select TAAs as proper targets for therapy and candidate mAbs as drugs from among them. The immunohistochemical analysis using many fresh lung cancer specimens suggested probabilities of proper targets, and moreover, presence of cancer-specific epitopes that could be distinguished from normal epitopes on the same molecules by mAbs. For Abs to efficiently kill the cancer cells they should have the ability to induce immunological cytotoxicity such as ADCC and/or CDC. They should also be able to inhibit the function mediated by the target Ags. For clinical point of view, the continuous presence of the target molecule on the cell surface until cell death might be essential for successful treatment. Therefore, it will be required for targets TAAs to play essential roles in tumorigenesis. Otherwise the cancer cells that do not express them could selectively survive during treatment and finally become dominant. It was also suggested that even the same molecules could play different roles in tumorigenesis quite often in different patients. Therefore when we develop therapeutic Abs, we should obtain information about the conditions of patients including genetic background to whom the treatment will be effective. I will discuss how we can accomplish this purpose.