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Preclinical evaluation of MORAb-009, a chimeric antibody targeting tumor-associated mesothelin

Raffit Hassan^1*, Wolfgang Ebel^2*, Eric L. Routhier², Rina Patel², J. Bradford Kline², Jingli Zhang¹, Qimin Chao², Sara Jacob², Howard Turchin², Lester Gibbs², Martin D. Phillips², Shiyama Mudali³, Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue³, Elizabeth M. Jaffee⁴, Maria Moreno⁵, Ira Pastan¹, Philip M. Sass², Nicholas C. Nicolaides² and Luigi Grasso²

¹Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA

²Morphotek Inc., Exton, PA, USA

³Drug Development Program, The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

⁴Department of Oncology, The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

⁵Obstetrics and Gynecology, VU Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract

Novel therapeutic agents that are safe and effective are needed for the treatment of pancreatic, ovarian, lung adenocarcinomas and mesotheliomas. Mesothelin is a glycosyl-phosphatidyl inositol (GPI)-linked membrane protein of 40 kDa over-expressed in all pancreatic adenocarcinoma and mesothelioma, in >70% of ovarian adenocarcinoma, and in non-small cell lung and colorectal cancers. The biological functions of mesothelin are not known, although it appears to be involved in cell adhesion via its interaction with MUC16. We have recently developed MORAb-009, a mouse-human chimeric IgG1κ monoclonal antibody with an affinity of 1.5 nM for human mesothelin. Here we provide evidence that MORAb-009 prevents adhesion of mesothelin-bearing tumor cells to MUC16 positive cells and can elicit cell-mediated cytotoxicity on mesothelin-bearing tumor cells. Treatment that included MORAb-009 in combination with chemotherapy led to a marked reduction in tumor growth of mesothelin-expressing tumors in nude mice compared to chemotherapy or MORAb-009 treatment alone. No adverse effects of MORAb-009 were noted during toxicology studies conducted in non-human primates. The preclinical data obtained from our studies warrants pursuing clinical testing of MORAb-009. We have in fact initiated a Phase I clinical study enrolling patients with mesothelin-positive pancreatic, mesothelioma, non-small cell lung and ovarian cancers.