Antibody-drug conjugates are potentially designed to treat autoimmune diseases, cancer, and rare diseases. The ADCs combine small molecule drugs (cytotoxic payloads), monoclonal antibodies, and linkers, allowing target specificity to kill cancer cells. Over the last few decades, researchers have emphasized the development of ADC for other therapeutic applications beyond cancer, such as rare bacterial infections, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Antibody-drug conjugates possess multi-specific target sites that offer higher efficacy and fewer side effects, making them an ideal option to use beyond cancer.
The ADC market witnessed a shift to the latest technology such as machine learning algorithms, mature screening technologies, and genetic engineering—researchers become more integrated to discover the therapeutic application of antibody-drug conjugates. Ongoing research and raising the interest in antibody drug conjugate market encourage pharmaceutical companies to pace the development of ADCs for other treatments. Driven by the above-listed factors, the global market of antibody-drug conjugates will witness tremendous growth in the future.
An Overview on Antibody Drug Conjugates
Antibody-drug conjugate is a novel class of pharmaceutical drugs specifically designed for target therapies to treat cancer. It consists of cytotoxic payloads, a linker, and monoclonal antibodies to induce cancer cell death. Upon binding at the tumor cell surface with antigen, linkers in the antibody-drug conjugates are cleaved and release the cytotoxic payload into the cytoplasm to induce apoptosis.
ADC induces the death of tumor cells through the bystander effect that occurs when the payload diffuses on the cell membrane. Seeing the high potential in the ADC based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, many antibody drugs conjugates market players such as AstraZeneca, Bolt Biotherapeutics, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, ImmunoGen, and Pfizer are finding revolutionary approaches to understand the full potential of ADCs beyond the treatment of cancer. The paving interest of pharmaceuticals towards ADC targeted therapies resulted in the growth of the market.
Antibody Drug Conjugates in Non-Oncologic Applications
Major antibody drug conjugate market players, including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Roche, have adopted advanced technological strategies to create innovative ADCs to use beyond cancer treatment.
▪ Autoimmune Disorder Treatment
The precise targeting efficacy of antibody-drug conjugates makes them a potent tool in the treatment of autoimmune disorders. By directing the small molecule cytotoxic payloads at the immune cells that initiate pathological responses, antibody-drug conjugates provide a systemic approach for immunosuppressive therapies to cure patients with this disorder.
▪ Neurological Disorders
The target specificity of the antibody-drug conjugates opens avenues for the treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer and more. ADCs help to mitigate the risk of disease progression by delivering therapeutic agents to the affected neural cells.
▪ Infectious Diseases
ADCs have shown a positive result in addressing the rate of infectious diseases by targeting the cells of specific pathogens, resulting in cell lysis. By using technological tools, monoclonal antibodies can be reengineered to recognize the bacteria and virus cells to initiate the internalization action and kill the pathogen.
Heading to the Antibody Drug Conjugate Market Insight
Antibody-drug conjugates enter the market to bring revolution in cancer treatment with minimal side effects. The combination of monoclonal antibodies and linkers helps to selectively eradicate the cancer cells. Initially, ADCs have been used for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. Still, researchers have emphasized demonstrating the therapeutic superiority in treating solid tumor malignancies, including gastrointestinal, cervical, lung, ovarian, breast, and urothelial cancer. Though ADC has been used for the treatment of malignant tumors, the FDA approval of ADC for the treatment of solid tumors still excites the market most—becoming the key driver for the growth of the market.
In context to the solid tumor, currently, FDA has approved six antibody-drug conjugates for the treatment namely: ado-trastuzumab emtansine and trastuzumab deruxtecan, anti-HER2; enfortumab-vedotin, targeting nectin-4; sacituzuzmab govitecan, targeting Trop2; tisotumab vedotin, targeting tissue factor; and mirvetuximab soravtansine, targeting folate receptor-alpha.
As more pharmaceutical leaders are looking forward to leveraging advanced technology to determine more therapeutic applications, it is expected that the global antibody drug conjugates market will grow at a CAGR of 9.63%, according to Roots Analysis.
ADC Market Challenges and Scope of Improvement
There is no doubt antibody drug conjugates have shown promising results in cancer treatment, but several challenges persist in the development of ADC. The most common challenge includes ADCs’ toxic effects such as thrombocytopenia, leucopenia, anemia, neutropenia, and gastrointestinal effects. Besides this, the resistance of tumor antibody-drug conjugates that are manifested through decreased antigen expression levels, changes in intracellular transport pathways, and payload resistance. To overcome the challenges, the ADC market leaders focus on the below-listed aspects.
▪ There is a scope for improvement in ADC design including payload platforms, linkers, and targets to minimize toxicity.
▪ Pharmaceutical players must emphasize adding two cytotoxic agents as payloads to reduce the resistance of ADC.
▪ ADC internalization and lysosome delivery have to be improved via Bispecific antibodies to enhance the specificity of the antitumor.
Technological Advancements Help to Improve the Therapeutic Efficacy of ADC
Technological advancement brings opportunities for the development of advanced antibody-drug conjugates with high specificity and target potential.
▪ Linker technology, such as a cleavable linker, has been widely adopted by researchers as it enables the accurate release of cytotoxic payloads into the tumor cells, ensuring the target payload is released appropriately in a controlled manner.
▪ The scientist uses site-specific conjugation technology to optimize the conjugates for higher yield.
▪ Smartags Tandem Cleavage linker technology has been adopted to bring stability to the ADC structure.
Non-Technological Approach for ADC Improvement
In addition to this, a non-technological approach has been adopted for the internalization ability of antibody-drug conjugates. Pharmaceutical players are using a non-traditional payload approach to affect the disease cell. Examples of the non technological approach include;
▪ Bolt Biotherapeutics follows a non-technological approach where they use BDC 1001, an immune-stimulating antibody that conjugates combing TLR (Toll-Like Receptors) with tumor-targeting antibodies in order to localize immune stimulation response at the targeted tumor sites.
▪ Avidity Biosciences, antibody oligonucleotide conjugates have been used to modulate RNAs inside disease tissues.
▪ Silverback Therapeutics developed an SBT 6050 TLR8 agonist conjugated to the HER2-directed monoclonal antibody, enabling systemic delivery of the immune modulator by localizing it on tumor sites.
Diving into the Future of Antibody Drug Conjugates
In conclusion, antibody drug conjugates have shown remarkable against numerous types of cancer. Looking ahead, extensive clinical trials and extensive research are underway that led to the development of more specific ADCs for the treatment of a wide range of diseases. More antibody drug conjugate market players switch to the latest technology such as single-use technology, that significantly contributes to developing ADCs with great efficacy and high purity. Overall, the future of ADCs is promising and offers more therapeutic potential to treat diseases.
About Roots Analysis
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