The enhancement of immune effector functions has been proposed as a potential strategy for increasing the efficacy of therapeutic antibodies. Here, we show that removing fucose from trastuzumab (Herceptin) increased its binding to FcgammaRIIIa, enhanced antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, and more than doubled the median progression-free survival when compared with conventional trastuzumab in treating preclinical models of HER2-amplified breast cancer. Our results show that afucosylated trastuzumab has superior efficacy in treating in vivo models of HER2-amplified breast cancer and support the development of effector function-enhanced antibodies for solid tumor therapy. Cancer Res; 70(11); 4481-9. (c)2010 AACR.

PMID: 20484044 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] Source: National Library of Medicine.