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For optimal antibody effectiveness, sometimes less is more

Antibodies that activate stimulatory or inhibitory receptors are of great therapeutic interest for the treatment of cancer or autoimmune diseases. It emerges that such antibodies work better if they don’t bind to receptors too tightly.
  1. Christoph Wülfing

    1. Christoph Wülfing is at the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK.

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  2. Simon J. Dovedi

    1. Simon J. Dovedi is in Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca, Cambridge CB21 6GH, UK.

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Antibodies have a remarkable capacity to recognize specific parts of proteins called antigens, particularly those associated with disease or infection. B cells of the immune system make antibodies, and they can be generated to target any protein, engineered to tune their properties and produced at scale in vitro. Thus, they have become widely used therapeutics. Writing in Nature, Yu et al.1 report how antigen-binding strength determines the effectiveness of three antibodies used to treat tumours and autoimmune diseases, and the authors suggest that less is more.

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Nature 614, 416-418 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00244-5

References

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Competing Interests

S.J.D. is an employee of and shareholder in AstraZeneca.

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