[Experimental study on targeting therapy of human hepatocellular carcinoma in nude mice using...

Conjugate between adriamycin and anti-transferrin receptor monoclonal antobody WuT9 was prepared with Dextran T10 as a bridge, and it was proved to retain both the drug cytotoxity and antibody activity. The conjugate or its individual components were administered to athymic mice bearing SMMC-7721 human hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. These agents were given 2, 5, 8 days after inoculation of tumor cells (1 x 10(7) per mouse). Tumor size was measured daily (geometric mean diameter, GMD) and latent period recorded. All the animals were killed on day 35 to measure tumor weight and natural killer (NK) activity of splenic lymphocytes. The results showed that the latent period in the conjugate treated group was much longer than that in Adr treated group (33.0 days vs 25.0 days), and that GMD on day 35 in the conjugate treated group was much smaller than that in Adr treated group (3.80 +/- 1.9 mm vs 6.69 +/- 2.3 mm, P < 0.05). In addition, NK activity in the conjugate treated group was higher than that in Adr treated group (28.2 +/- 8.2% vs 15.1 +/- 3.6%, P < 0.05). The results suggest that adriamycin-anti-transferrin receptor conjugate might be useful in the treatment of human HCC.