NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[flipper44]

ATTILATHEHUNT, your question is:

Do you think Pfizer's 43B acquisition of Seagen is a threat?

Seagen is a leading developer of medicine called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which are designed to kill cancer cells and spare healthy ones. ADCs use antibodies to deliver small molecule drugs directly to a tumor site, which may reduce side effects and offer greater efficacy, according to Seagen’s website.

My short answer was and still is, no, ADC technology by Seagen/Pfizer and other companies is not in any way a scientific/therapeutic threat to the DCVax platform.

Before I give you my reasoning, this article may help orient you to the limitations of first through third generation Antibody drug conjugates.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10189422/

As you can see, ADCs are essentially an antibody + a link + payload. In other words, an antibody attached to a toxic payload.

The idea is that you can make the antibody selected for a particular antigen and it will carry chemo to destroy the offending cell.

Drug companies love stuff like this, because it’s easy to patent. You tweak the link, you tweak the payload, etc.

The problem is, while it’s kind of a cool technology when you first understand it, it ultimately suffers from the same drawbacks as the simplest peptide vaccines, tumor escape.

Each ADC therapy literally targets only one antigen each. Look at this easy to read table. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10189422/table/tI-MCO-18-6-02643/?report=objectonly

A little more history. Scientists have tried to make chemo safer for decades. One technique was to encapsulate it then inject it directly into tumors. The tumors would still leak chemo, and of course, the cancer would adapt and the chemo would ultimately lose.

DCVax-l, not only expresses a plethora of different antigens to t-cells, thus reducing the chance for tumor escape, it also costimulates those t-cells so that they undergo massive clonal expansion, and that prior costimulation also helps directs the t-cell across the threshold of the tumor once it arrives, as opposed to other t-cell therapies where t-cells freeze up on the tumor’s doorstep.

So what of SeaGens approvals? When it comes to solid tumors, their few approvals are as second and third line therapies.

There really is no comparison. ADCs are simply a bit safer than their chemo monotherapy predecessors, but they are otherwise extremely limited.