TAIWAN’S ACADEMIA SINICA DEVELOPS ANTIBODY TO KILL CANCER CELLS

A research team at Taiwan's top academic research institution has developed a new antibody tool that has shown promising results in killing malignant tumor cells in mice and could eventually be turned into a therapeutic drug, Yang Shu-min and Elizabeth Hsu reported for Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA).

Wu Han-chung, head of Academia Sinica's Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology and the research team, said at a press conference Monday that the team's starting point was a molecule often seen as an important target in identifying cancer cells. The molecule, known as EpCAM (Epithelial Cell Adhesion Molecule), is a protein on cell membranes that is commonly seen in epithelial tissues and in malignant tumors. It plays a role in the attachment, movement, reproduction and differentiation of cells, Wu said. Wu’s team found that EpCAM acts through growth factor signaling to stabilize another cell-surface molecule, PD-L1, which allows tumor cells to escape recognition by immune systems, leading to tumor growth.

Wu knew the team was on the right track because methods to mitigate PD-L1 action have proven quite effective in clinical settings, Academia Sinica said in a statement on the breakthrough achieved by Wu's team. Developers of cancer therapies through immune checkpoint inhibitors such as CTLA4 and PD-1 even earned Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine in 2018, the statement said.

Once Wu's team identified the importance of EpCAM in the process, it developed a neutralizing antibody tool, called EpAb2-6, to prevent EpCAM signaling and decrease the level of PD-L1 in cancer cells in a lab setting. That led to the death of cancer cells and activated the ability of T cells to kill cancer cells, Academia Sinica said. Wu added that EpAb2-6 was the first antibody that can kill cancer cells directly and inhibit cancer cell metastasis.