Hello again everyone,
It’s time again for another update on the world of ADC. There’s been lots of good stuff happening as always in our industry and I’m excited to put some highlights below for you to take a look at.
1. Video of ADC killing mouse cells
Ok, I know that I already shared this on LinkedIn, but it is just that cool. I have watched this video dozens of times. And when the cells explode like balloons it’s just too cool. Maybe this isn’t the newsiest thing, but it definitely will add some pep to your step when you get into lab next.
Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADCs) killing mouse breast cancer cells (video)
Drug Discovery (Source website)
**Side note: I’ve also watched the video while only looking at the left side of the screen, and that alone is still amazing.
2. New Frontiers in ADC Development
This article is a bit of a longer read, but this is what happens when you get a bunch of the strongest voices in ADCs together to talk about their industry. Tons of good insight and predictions. A realistic look at the industry today as well as some thoughts on where the industry has failed to meet expectations. The article isn’t short, but is worth the time for sure.
New Frontiers in ADC Development
The article is great, but some of my favorite insights are:
- When asked what successes ADCs have had, Chris Martin (ADC Therapeutics CEO replied, “Great drugs are built on the shoulders of good drugs, and the progression over the last five years…is a testament to this.”
- The author asked the panel what are ADCs biggest challenges going forward, and it was fascinating to see how different and varied every answer was depending on their backgrounds and current roles.
- And when asked what the future holds, the responses ranged from new combination therapies, and payload/linker technologies, to non-oncology applications and expansion of the current marketing authorizations.
3. A pair of articles for my fellow ADC nerds out there
There were two articles that I came across that got my mind running. The first is a comprehensive report of the application of different mass spec technologies to ADC characterization.
Investigation of Antibody-Drug Conjugates by Mass Spectrometry
To be fair, as a process guy, I don’t really understand all of the specifics and nuances that this article covers, but I can tell this is something worth taking a look at for anyone who can properly spell Triple Quad LC-MS/MS
The second article is actually a white paper put out by Innate Pharma trying to sell some aggregation standards.
Monitoring Aggregation of Antibody-Drug Conjugates
The short version is that they used their aggregate standard to test a bunch of different conjugates. The cool part is where they were able to use the Temperature of Aggregation (Tagg) as a proxy for aggregation propensity. The paper looks at this on the final product, but it’s also potentially a very cool assay that could be helpful in process development. Has anyone played with this to see how process changes can affect ADC stability? I’d be interested to see how this can apply not only across multiple constructs like they look at, but at different times during conjugation. Specifically, around cysteine reduction.
4. Market Reports
Maybe someone out there can help me with this one. As I spend a significant amount of time each week curating all of the interesting stories that I can find about ADCs I invariably come across an incredibly large number of these ADC Market Reports. Here are some examples from the last two weeks alone:
And I have links to at least 6 more of these. All looking the exact same. All telling the same thing. All announcing great and immense growth in the upcoming years. Each one is published by a different company, but they are all asking for ~$3280 for access to the PDF report. Who is buying these things? And how can there possibly be so many? Maybe this is the Pharma market equivalent of the Nigerian prince who wants you to hold onto his money for him.
5. Other Links
Polatuzumab Vedotin : First Global Approval
This is the first article in this edition of the journal Drugs. It is the science journal version of a montage on the approval of Polivy. So if you want to see the entire package wrapped into a nice little story, look no further.
I know this isn’t about ADCs, but if you’re like me, you spend an extraordinary amount of time paying attention to ADCs but only hear tangentially about Gene Therapy and its goings-on. So, for those of us who aren’t as informed as we might like, the New England Journal of Medicine put together a fantastic report.
Justin’s Thoughts:
Putting together these news summaries has been a lot of fun so far, and there is another idea I have been interested in, but I need your help. Instead of putting together a summary of the latest news, I have been interested in diving a little deeper on a specific topic and trying to put something together that is a little more holistic on one specific area of ADCs.
All of that being said, here is the part where we switch to a choose your own adventure novel. Below are a couple of topic areas I have been thinking about. Vote for your favorite in the comments section below, and I will get working on writing up the winner. And as a second check that this is actually interesting to anyone, I’ll say the threshold for a go story will be 20 votes.
