Abstract
Besides surgery, the therapeutic possibilities for the treatment of human gliomas include adoptive cellular immunotherapy, radioimmunotherapy, immunotherapy mediated by chemoimmunoconjugates and, more recently, bispecific monoclonal antibodies (biMAbs). Anti-CD3 x anti-tenascin (TN) is the first reagent of a number of biMAbs under investigation for prospective use in vivo to maximize the cell-mediated cytolytic potential of glioma patients. This biMAb originated from the fusion of 2 parental hybridomas, made resistant by retrovirus-mediated infection to the different metabolic drugs, geneticin and methotrexate, respectively. The resulting hybrid hybridomas were selected on the basis of the double specificity for CD3 and TN, cloned several times and grown under continuous metabolic pressure. The different families of recombinant antibodies were then purified by high-pressure liquid chromatography on hydroxylapatite columns. Immunohistochemical studies on tumor specimens of different origin and histotype have shown that the selected biMAb presented a distribution pattern similar to that of the parental anti-TN MAb, maintaining the same staining homogeneity and intensity. Moreover, the mitogenic activity of anti-CD3 x anti-TN biMAb on peripheral blood mononuclear cells was similar to that featured by the parental anti-CD3 MAb. Furthermore, the hybrid molecule induced TNF-alpha gene expression in activated PBMC. Finally, the anti-CD3 x anti-TN featured the desired killer targeting ability, being able to induce a significantly increased cytotoxic activity against TN+ tumor cells.
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