Development of Multienzyme Antibody-Enzyme Conjugates for Prodrug Therapy

Chemotherapy, in which toxic drugs are used to stop or slow the division of cancerous cells, suffers greatly from off-target effects. These drugs circulate throughout the body and are not able to tell the difference between a cancer cell and a healthy cell—indeed many healthy cells also receive the toxic chemotherapeutics. This limits the amount of drug that a patient receives, in order to minimize damage to healthy cells. A therapy is needed that is intelligent; a smart drug would specifically find cancer cells as it circulates through the body, leaving healthy cells untouched. Our goal is to make a protein therapeutic that finds a tumor and converts a nontoxic molecule, a pro drug, to a toxic drug only inside the tumor.