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Immune checkpoint therapies have shown tremendous promise in cancer therapy. However, tools to assess their target engagement, and hence the ability to predict their efficacy, have been lacking. Here, we show that target engagement and tumor-residence kinetics of antibody therapeutics targeting programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) can be quantified noninvasively. In computational docking studies, we observed that PD-L1-targeted monoclonal antibodies (atezolizumab, avelumab, and durvalumab) and a high-affinity PD-L1-binding peptide, WL12, have common interaction sites on PD-L1. Using the peptide radiotracer [[sup.64]Cu]WL12 in vivo, we employed positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and biodistribution studies in multiple xenograft models and demonstrated that variable PD-L1 expression and its saturation by atezolizumab, avelumab, and durvalumab can be quantified independently of biophysical properties and pharmacokinetics of antibodies. Next, we used [[sup.64]Cu]WL12 to evaluate the impact of time and dose on the unoccupied fraction of tumor PD-L1 during treatment. These quantitative measures enabled, by mathematical modeling, prediction of antibody doses needed to achieve therapeutically effective occupancy (defined as >90%). Thus, we show that peptide-based PET is a promising tool for optimizing dose and therapeutic regimens employing PD-L1 checkpoint antibodies, and can be used for improving therapeutic efficacy., Introduction The success of cancer drug therapy depends on a number of factors within the tumor including drug access, completeness of drug-target engagement, and targeting cancer cell heterogeneity. Target engagement [...]

Background: Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is an exciting cell-based cancer immunotherapy. Unfortunately, CAR-T cell therapy is associated with serious toxicities such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurotoxicity. The mechanism of these serious adverse events (SAEs) and how homing, distribution and retention of CAR-T cells contribute to toxicities is not fully understood. Enabling in vitro methods to allow meaningful, sensitive in vivo biodistribution studies is needed to better understand CAR-T cell disposition and its relationship to both effectiveness and safety of these products. Methods: To determine if radiolabelling of CAR-T cells could support positron emission tomography (PET)-based biodistribution studies, we labeled IL-13Rα2 targeting scFv-IL-13Rα2-CAR-T cells (CAR-T cells) with 89Zirconium-oxine (89Zr-oxine) and characterized and compared their product attributes with non-labeled CAR-T cells. The 89Zr-oxine labeling conditions were optimized for incubation time, temperature, and use of serum for labeling. In addition, T cell subtype characterization and product attributes of radiolabeled CAR-T cells were studied to assess their overall quality including cell viability, proliferation, phenotype markers of T-cell activation and exhaustion, cytolytic activity and release of interferon-γ upon co-culture with IL-13Rα2 expressing glioma cells. Results: We observed that radiolabeling of CAR-T cells with 89Zr-oxine is quick, efficient, and radioactivity is retained in the cells for at least 8 days with minimal loss. Also, viability of radiolabeled CAR-T cells and subtypes such as CD4 + , CD8 + and scFV-IL-13Rα2 transgene positive T cell population were characterized and found similar to that of unlabeled cells as determined by TUNEL assay, caspase 3/7 enzyme and granzyme B activity assay. Moreover, there were no significant changes in T cell activation (CD24, CD44, CD69 and IFN-γ) or T cell exhaustion (PD-1, LAG-3 and TIM3) markers expression between radiolabeled and unlabeled CAR-T cells. In chemotaxis assays, migratory capability of radiolabeled CAR-T cells to IL-13Rα2Fc was similar to that of non-labeled cells. Conclusions: Importantly, radiolabeling has minimal impact on biological product attributes including potency of CAR-T cells towards IL-13Rα2 positive tumor cells but not IL-13Rα2 negative cells as measured by cytolytic activity and release of IFN-γ. Thus, IL-13Rα2 targeting CAR-T cells radiolabeled with 89Zr-oxine retain critical product attributes and suggest 89Zr-oxine radiolabeling of CAR-T cells may facilitate biodistribution and tissue trafficking studies in vivo using PET. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A radiochemical synthesis of [18F]DK222, a peptide binder of programmed death ligand 1 protein, suitable for human PET studies is described, and results from validation productions are presented. The high specific activity radiotracer product is prepared as a sterile, apyrogenic solution that conforms to current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) requirements. In addition, the production is extended to use a commercial synthesizer platform (General Electric FASTlab 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]