烟草生产出能接合癌细胞的抗体

【云栈自译，欢迎批评。请勿转载，谢谢合作】

【DavidShi译文】病毒学家希拉里·考普罗斯基博士上个月在美国科学院院刊上报告说，他和同事们用烟草产生出了能够识别和捕获乳腺癌和结肠直肠癌细胞的单克隆抗体，这是他近十年来工作中的又一个进步。

治疗中此类抗体的需求量急遽上升，然而抗体的产量并没有同步提高。费城杰斐逊金梅尔癌症中心和托马斯·杰弗逊大学杰弗逊医学院癌症生物学教授考普罗斯基博士认为：比起现在实验室使用动物制造抗体来，“植物是安全的，相对廉价的，并更易于应用。”“植物更适合”进行大规模生产。

考普罗斯基博士兼任杰弗逊医学院神经病毒学中心和生物技术基础实验室的主任。他和他的课题组在最近的研究中，将抗Lewis Y 抗原的抗体的DNA编码序列插入烟草中。在各种癌中，Lewis Y 抗原只存在于乳腺癌和结肠直肠癌细胞中。

这项特殊的研究有个此前人们并不知晓的意外发现，抗体结合于人类Fc片断受体，这是免疫治疗过程中的一个关键步骤。所谓的“效应细胞”，即杀死肿瘤细胞的巨噬细胞，通过它们的Fc片断受体来识别单克隆抗体。

考普罗斯基博士说“此项技术潜力很大。”他接着说，应该开展植物产抗体的临床试验。“在将来，在接下来的5到10年里，它可能成为生产治疗性抗体的主要方式。”

来源：托马斯·杰弗逊大学医院

【英文原文】

Source: Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Using Tobacco To Fight Cancer: Scientists Engineer Tobacco-Made Antibodies Targeting Cancer Cells

When virologist Hilary Koprowski, M.D., reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how he and colleagues used tobacco plants to produce cancer-fighting monoclonal antibodies that recognize and hunt down breast and colorectal cancer cells, the work represented another step toward a goal he has been pursuing for the last decade.

While therapeutic uses for such antibodies continue to grow at a rapid rate, production has failed to keep pace. Dr. Koprowski, professor of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, contends that “plants are safer, less expensive and easier to use” than currently used methods in the laboratory and with animals. For mass production purposes, he says, “plants make more sense.”

In the most recent research, Dr. Koprowski, who is also director of the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories and the Center for Neurovirology at Jefferson Medical College, and his team inserted DNA coding for an antibody against the Lewis Y antigen, which is found on breast and colorectal cancer cells, among other cancers, into tobacco plants. The plants, in turn, become factories churning out antibody. As in their earlier studies, the antibodies were able to kill the cancer cells in the laboratory dish and stop tumor growth in mice. Not only that, these plant-made antibodies worked as well as those produced in the standard way, by mammalian cells. Both types of antibodies suppressed tumor cell growth in mice up to 28 days.

This particular work had an added twist, which has not been shown before: the researchers also demonstrated that the antibodies attached to the human Fc receptor, a key step in the development of immunotherapy. So-called “effector cells” – tumor-cell killing macrophages – recognize monoclonal antibodies through their Fc receptors.

“This technology has all the potential in the world,” Dr. Koprowski says, adding that clinical trials involving plant-produced antibodies should begin to be planned. “It will be the future, and in the next five to 10 years, it could be the main way that therapeutic antibodies are made.”