Targeted Gene Therapy for Breast Cancer

Immunotherapy has proven to be safe and effective in targeting human cancers in a clinical setting. However, durable disease-free remissions have yet to be realized in the majority of treated patients. Unconjugated antibodies can be improved by the attachment of effector molecules to the cancer-specific antibody. Improvements in the design of antibody based therapeutics will require specific delivery of cytotoxic agents such as toxin molecules or toxin-encoding genes. Two monoclonal antibodies with selective binding to HER-2neu overexpressing breast cancer cells have been miniaturized by fusing variable chain genes with the dimerization domain of the human Fc constant region.