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Rajasekaran N, Wang X, Ravindranathan S, Chin DJ, Tseng SY, Klakamp SL, Widmann K, Kapoor VN, Vexler V, Keegan P, Yao S, LaVallee T, Khare SD. Toripalimab, a therapeutic monoclonal anti-PD-1 antibody with high binding affinity to PD-1 and enhanced potency to activate human T cells. Cancer Immunol Immunother 2024; 73:60. [PMID: 38400933 PMCID: PMC10894093 DOI: 10.1007/s00262-024-03635-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2023] [Accepted: 01/15/2024] [Indexed: 02/26/2024]
Abstract
Over the past decade, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved immune checkpoint inhibitors that target programmed death-1 (PD-1) have demonstrated significant clinical benefit particularly in patients with PD-L1 expressing tumors. Toripalimab is a humanized anti-PD-1 antibody, approved by FDA for first-line treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in combination with chemotherapy. In a post hoc analysis of phase 3 studies, toripalimab in combination with chemotherapy improved overall survival irrespective of PD-L1 status in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (JUPITER-02), advanced non-small cell lung cancer (CHOICE-01) and advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (JUPITER-06). On further characterization, we determined that toripalimab is molecularly and functionally differentiated from pembrolizumab, an anti-PD-1 mAb approved previously for treating a wide spectrum of tumors. Toripalimab, which binds the FG loop of PD-1, has 12-fold higher binding affinity to PD-1 than pembrolizumab and promotes significantly more Th1- and myeloid-derived inflammatory cytokine responses in healthy human PBMCs in vitro. In an ex vivo system employing dissociated tumor cells from treatment naïve non-small cell lung cancer patients, toripalimab induced several unique genes in IFN-γ and immune cell pathways, showed different kinetics of activation and significantly enhanced IFN-γ signature. Additionally, binding of toripalimab to PD-1 induced lower levels of SHP1 and SHP2 recruitment, the negative regulators of T cell activation, in Jurkat T cells ectopically expressing PD-1. Taken together, these data demonstrate that toripalimab is a potent anti-PD-1 antibody with high affinity PD-1 binding, strong functional attributes and demonstrated clinical activity that encourage its continued clinical investigation in several types of cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Xiaoguang Wang
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Sruthi Ravindranathan
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Daniel J Chin
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Su-Yi Tseng
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Scott L Klakamp
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Kate Widmann
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Varun N Kapoor
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Vladimir Vexler
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Patricia Keegan
- TopAlliance Biosciences, 9430 Key West Ave, Suite 125, Rockville, MD, 20850, USA
| | - Sheng Yao
- TopAlliance Biosciences, 9430 Key West Ave, Suite 125, Rockville, MD, 20850, USA
- Shanghai Junshi Biosciences, Shanghai, China
| | - Theresa LaVallee
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
| | - Sanjay D Khare
- Coherus Biosciences, 333 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 600, Redwood City, CA, 94065, USA
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Wu X, Sereno AJ, Huang F, Zhang K, Batt M, Fitchett JR, He D, Rick HL, Conner EM, Demarest SJ. Protein design of IgG/TCR chimeras for the co-expression of Fab-like moieties within bispecific antibodies. MAbs 2015; 7:364-76. [PMID: 25611120 DOI: 10.1080/19420862.2015.1007826] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Immunoglobulins and T cell receptors (TCRs) share common sequences and structures. With the goal of creating novel bispecific antibodies (BsAbs), we generated chimeric molecules, denoted IgG_TCRs, where the Fv regions of several antibodies were fused to the constant domains of the α/β TCR. Replacing CH1 with Cα and CL with Cβ, respectively, was essential for achieving at least partial heavy chain/light chain assembly. Further optimization of the linker regions between the variable and constant domains, as well as replacement of the large FG loop of Cβ with a canonical β-turn, was necessary to consistently obtain full heavy chain/light chain assembly. The optimized IgG_TCR molecules were evaluated biophysically and shown to maintain the binding properties of their parental antibodies. A few BsAbs were generated by co-expressing native Fabs and IgG_TCR Fabs within the same molecular construct. We demonstrate that the IgG_TCR designs steered each of the light chains within the constructs to specifically pair with their cognate heavy chain counterparts. We did find that even with complete constant domain specificity between the CH1/CL and Cα/Cβ domains of the Fabs, strong variable domain interactions can dominate the pairing specificity and induce some mispairing. Overall, the IgG_TCR designs described here are a first step toward the generation of novel BsAbs that may be directed toward the treatment of multi-faceted and complex diseases.
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Key Words
- DSC, differential scanning calorimetry
- FG loop
- HC, heavy chain
- Ha, heavy chain containing Ca in place of CH1
- Hb, heavy chain containing Cb in place of CH1
- LC, light chain
- La, heavy chain containing Ca in place of CL
- Lb, heavy chain containing Cb in place of CL
- RU, resonance units
- SDS-PAGE, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis
- SEC, size exclusion chromatography
- SPR, surface plasmon resonance
- T cell receptor
- TCR, T cell receptor
- bispecific antibody
- protein chimera
- protein design
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiufeng Wu
- a Eli Lilly Biotechnology Center ; San Diego , CA USA
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