Beyond ADCs: harnessing bispecific antibodies to directly induce apoptosis for targeted tumor eradication

Bispecific apoptosis triggers (BATs) are innovative bispecific antibodies designed to simultaneously target both a tumor-associated antigen and a cancer cell's death receptor, thereby directly activating the extrinsic apoptotic pathway to induce death of cancer cells. This unique mechanism distinguishes BATs from antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which rely on cytotoxic drugs, and bispecific immune cell engagers such as bispecific T-cell engagers (BiTEs) and bispecific natural killer cell engagers (NKCEs), which recruit immune cells to eliminate target cancer cells. BATs offer significant potential advantages in clinical efficacy and safety over ADCs and BiTEs. Although the field is still emerging, recent advancements are highly promising, and analysis of preclinical and clinical data of DR5-targeting antibodies have been pivotal in outlining the criteria for the next generation of effective and safe medicines. Antibodies found inactive in preclinical testing were also found to be clinically ineffective, whereas antibodies with minimal preclinical results demonstrated moderate clinical activity. All clinical DR5-targeting antibodies were well tolerated by patients even at high doses (with the exception of TAS266 due to its unique design). These findings underscore the predictive value of robust preclinical models on clinical outcomes. Notably, first-in-class BAT, Cancerlysin™ IMV-M, demonstrated potent efficacy in diverse xenograft cancer models and safety in non-human primates, marking a significant advancement in developing safe and effective anti-cancer drugs.