[Targeting therapy using monoclonal antibody directed against growth factor receptors]

Targeting therapy is expected to be a new effective anti-cancer treatment in near future. Major advances are achieved by considerable effort in this area. Monoclonal antibodies that recognize tumour-associated antigens were conjugated to chemotherapeutic drugs, toxins and radionuclides with various procedures. To apply this new therapy for clinical use, many problems still remain to be clarified. These problems consist of human anti-mouse antibody, antigenic heterogeneity and low tumour uptake. By our experiment, growth factor receptor was an ideal target for targeting therapy and immunoconjugate directed against growth factor receptor showed selective cytotoxicity to cancer cells with expression of growth factor receptor. Moreover, cytotoxic effect was positively correlated with expression level of growth factor receptor.