Immunotoxins

The present Competitive Intelligence Report about Immunotoxins provides a competitor evaluation in the field of tumor targeted toxins by means of antibodies or proteins for treatment of cancer as of July 2009.

Immunotoxin therapy is a promising molecular cancer treatment strategy. Its main advantage is seletive cytotoxicity towards tumor cells and minimal toxicity in normal tissues.The clinical development of immunotoxins in the treatment of solid tumors has been impeded in part, by the induction of an immune response directed primarily against the toxin moiety, and in part by loss of activity of the fusion protein, e.g. by sterical hindrance in the case of large toxin moieties. Strategies to overcome these limitations and improve the clinical performance of immunotoxins may be to reduce immunogenicity by removing the T-cell epitopes and use bivalent or bispecific constructs as next generation molecules. A further possibility is to enhance the catalytic activity of the toxin while at the same time mitigating the unwanted systemic toxicity. At present ten immunotoxins are in phase II or higher stages of clinical development and eight projects in early clinical evaluation.

The report includes a compilation of current active projects in research and development of immunotoxins in oncology. In addition, the report lists company-specific R&D pipelines of immunotoxins. Competitor projects are listed in a tabular format providing information on:

• Drug Codes,
• Target / Mechanism of Action,
• Class of Compound,
• Company,
• Product Category,
• Indication,
• R&D Stage and
• additional comments with a hyperlink leading to the source of information.