Abstract 351: Uptake of antibody-drug conjugates by cultured Kupffer cells can predict pharmacokinetics
Authors: Meyer David , Shum Sara , Jonas Mechthild , Anderson Martha , Hunter Joshua , Chemuturi Nagendra , Okeley Nicole , Lyon Robert 
Published: July 2016

Interest in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) has increased rapidly in the oncology field over the past several years. Recent advances in the ADC field have been achieved in part by an improved understanding of how conjugation with drug-linkers impacts the biophysical, pharmacokinetic (PK), and biodistribution properties of a monoclonal antibody. Most of these advances have been driven by in vivo preclinical observations, an inevitably low throughput endeavor. A higher throughput in vitro method that would allow some level of predictive power for ADC disposition in vivo would be highly advantageous, requiring less test article and allowing for much faster turnaround. Thus far no such methods for ADCs have been reported, in contrast to the situation for the prediction of the metabolic clearance of small molecule therapeutics, for which cultured hepatocytes are widely used as an in vitro tool. It has been generally assumed that clearance of ADCs is driven by cells of the monocyte phagocytic system, and we recently published immunohistochemistry (IHC) data implicating hepatic sinusoidal endothelium and the resident liver macrophages, Kupffer cells (KCs), in the accelerated clearance of highly-loaded ADCs. We sought to use this observation to develop a convenient assay that might correlate ADC uptake in vitro with in vivo PK. Initial fluorescent microscopy experiments revealed that cultured rat KCs stain intensely when incubated with fluorescently labeled ADCs, but much less so with unconjugated antibody, similar to the observed IHC results. In an effort to further improve the throughput of this method to allow the rapid comparison of many ADCs, we moved to a FACS-based platform to quantify the amount of KC-associated fluorescent conjugate. To quantify the effect of different drug-linkers, we prepared homogeneous ADCs with 8 drugs per antibody and observed that the KC staining intensity varied widely depending upon the characteristics of the drug-linker that was conjugated. KCs incubated with ADCs loaded with vc-PAB-MMAE had a mean fluorescent intensity (MFI) &gt;20 fold higher than unconjugated Antibody. Additionally, ADCs loaded with MMAE that contain a polyethylene glycol (PEG) masking moiety in the linker had a much lower MFI than those without PEG. This FACS method allowed us to compare fluorescent uptake by KCs with ADC clearance determined in vivo. We have observed that ADC uptake by cultured KCs in vitro correlates well with ADC PK, allowing for more rapid assessment of the PK impact of new drug classes, drug-linker designs, and conjugation methodologies.

Citation Format: David Meyer, Sara Shum, Mechthild Jonas, Martha Anderson, Joshua Hunter, Nagendra Chemuturi, Nicole Okeley, Robert Lyon. Uptake of antibody-drug conjugates by cultured Kupffer cells can predict pharmacokinetics. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 351.