Dosing anticancer antibodies

Cancer patients treated with IgG1 antibodies typically need to receive weekly doses of several hundred milligrams over several months for a therapeutic effect. While many companies are trying to improve the efficacy in order to lower the required doses, research done by Micromet AG suggests that it won't be possible to do so. The work also suggests that there may be other benefits to high doses of antibodies.

"There is a discrepancy by a factor of between 100 and 1,000 between the potency of IgG1 antibodies in vitro and in vivo," CSO Patrick Baeuerle told BioCentury. "A common feature of those antibodies is that they primarily work via antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC)."...