Much as a hybrid bicycle is a cross between two bikes--a road
bike frame with mountain bike handlebars, for instance--this
hybrid compound is a cross between two molecules. One is a
traditional anticancer drug, a small molecule that targets
cancer tumors. The other is a type of antibody, which is a
protein produced in great abundance by the bodys immune system
and found naturally in the bloodstream. The hybrid of the two,
described in an upcoming issue of the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, was found to have a profound
effect on the size of tumors in mouse models--shrinking tumors
of both Kaposi's sarcoma and colon cancers in these preclinical
studies. Moreover, this approach is general enough that it could
be used to design hybrids against any number of cancers. "A
single antibody can become a whole multiplicity of therapeutics
simply by mixing it with the desired small molecule," says TSRI
Professor Carlos F. Barbas III, Ph.D., who is Janet and W. Keith
Kellogg II Chair in Molecular