Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Herceptin and cancer
- Cancer
- Can be caused by
- Physical carcinogens
- Ultraviolet and ionizing radiation
- Biological carcinogens
- Infections from certain viruses, bacteria or parasites
- Chemical carcinogens
- Asbestos
- Tobacco smoke
- Human epidermal growth factor receptors
- HER
- Family of structurally-related cell surface proteins
- HER proteins undergo
a conformational change
upon ligand binding
- essential for
dimerization and
signalling
- Exception HER2
- HER2/HER3 pair has strongest mitogenic signalling
- Signalling pathways
- Ligand binding causes a conformational
change which leads to dimerisation
- Dimerisation activates the tyrosine kinase domain
- HER2 is in a conformation which promotes dimerisation
- Different combinations of
receptors stimulate different
signalling pathways
- HER pathways:
- Stimulate cell proliferation
- Stimulates cell survival
- Are anti apoptotic
- Are proto-oncogenes
- Can become oncogenic by
- Over expression
- Mutation
- 1984
- Published
that a mutant
form of HER2
causes
cancer in rats
- HER2
- Frequently amplified in
breast cancer samples
- Gene amplification
- When DNA replication goes
wrong the cell can end up with
hundreds of copies of a gene
- Normal cells are diploid so 2n
- The copy number of
a gene can be
determine by using a
technique called
fluorescence in situ
hybridisation
- FISH
- If the gene is a proto-oncogene like HER2 this can cause cancer
- Gene amplification of HER2 leads to increased levels of the receptor
- Normal breast tissue has around 20,000 copies per cell
- Cancerous tissue can have up to 2 million copies per cell
- Negative prognostic
marker for several cancers
- Over-expression of HER2 correlates with poor survival rates
- Median survival for breast cancer patients without treatment
- HER2 positive 3 years
- HER2 normal 6-7 years
- HER2 over-expressing
breast cancer can be
targeted using theraputic
antibodies
- Antibodies
- Can be raised
against nearly
any protein
- Are very
specific
- Binding can
interfere with
receptor
signalling
- Binding can
target cells for
destruction by
the bodies
immune system
- First step in making
a theraputic antibody
- Making a
monoclonal
antibody
- Process published in 1975
- monoclonal antibodies recognise a single epitope on an antigen
- As you have a cell line that makes that antibody,
vast quantities of the antibody can be made
- It was thought that
monoclonal
antibodies would
revolutionise
medicine
- However, murine antibodies are not well tolerated in humans
- This is solved by a process called humanisation
- 4D5
- Treating HER2
overexpressing cells with
4D5 - which binds the
extracellular domain of
HER2 - inhibits their
proliferation
- Monoclonal
antibody
- Injecting mice
with 4D5
surpresses
tumour growth
- Injected radio-labelled
4D5 targets HER2
positive breast cancer
cells in women
- Humanised
version
- Herceptin
(Trastuzumab)
- Herceptin
- An IgG1 molecule consists of
- 2 heavy chains
- 2 light chains
- Complementary determining regions(CDR's)
- Hypervariable regions of the antibody
- Involved in antigen binding
- Up to 6 CDRs can be involved in binding an antigen
- How its generated
- 1) Clone the murine heavy and light chain cDNA encoding 4D5
- 2) Clone the murine CDRs of 4D5 into human IgG1 heavy and light chain plasmids
- 3) The humanised antibody is then made by transfecting CHO cells with light chain and heavy chain plasmids
- Future directions
- Cancer returns in around
25% of women treated
with
herceptin/chemotherapy
- The cancer is
resistant to herceptin
treatment
- HER2 dimerisation inhibitors
- Pertuzumab gained FDA approval in 2012
- Used in combination with herceptin and chemotherapy
- Increases disease free survival in HER2
positive metastatic cancer by 6 months
- Antibody drug conjugates
- Trastuzuman emtansine
gained FDA approval in 2013
- Delivers toxic drug to HER2 positive tumours
- Increases overall survival by 6 months
- Targeting other HER family members
- Theraputic antibodies being developed against HER3