PNNL

Abstract

Radioimmunotherapy (RIT) with a-emitting radionuclides is an attractive approach for the treatment of minimal residual disease (MRD) because the short path lengths and high energies of a-particles produce optimal cytotoxicity at small target sites while minimizing damage to surrounding normal tissues. Pretargeted RIT (PRIT) using antibody-streptavidin (Ab-SA) constructs and radiolabeled biotin allows rapid, specific localization of radioactivity at tumor sites, making it an optimal method to target a-emitters with short half-lives, such as bismuth-213 (213Bi). Athymic mice bearing Ramos lymphoma xenografts received anti-CD20 1F5(scFv)4SA fusion protein (FP), followed by a dendrimeric clearing agent and [213Bi]DOTA-biotin. After 90 min, tumor uptake for 1F5(scFv)4SA was 16.5 ± 7.0 % injected dose per gram (ID/g) compared with 2.3 ± 0.9 % ID/g for the control FP. Mice treated with anti-CD20 PRIT and 600 µCi [213Bi]DOTA-biotin exhibited marked tumor growth delays compared to controls (mean tumor volume 0.01 ± 0.02 vs. 203.38 ± 83.03 mm3 after 19 days, respectively). The median survival for the 1F5(scFv)4SA group was 90 days compared to 23 days for the control FP (p