First soluble TCR therapy opens 'new universe' of cancer targets
T cell receptor bispecific agents provide off-the-shelf therapies for targeting intracellular tumor antigens.
The first bispecific molecule to engage tumor antigens via T cell receptor (TCR) targeting won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in January. The landmark regulatory decision could usher in a wave of similar off-the-shelf biologics that, unlike adoptive TCR-based cell therapies, don’t require the genetic manipulation of patient immune cells or their expansion in the laboratory.
These bispecific TCR agents can also potentially direct the body to attack cells expressing any cancer-related intracellular proteins, which are digested into peptides and presented on the cell surface to the immune system by human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules — and this, as David Scheinberg, a molecular pharmacologist who heads the Center for Experimental Therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, points out, “really opens the door to a new universe of targets.”
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