Landmark advances in the engineering and development of bispecific antibodies bsAbs are enabling unprecedented innovation and versatility in therapeutic antibody concepts. A defining bsAb feature is their potential for novel functionalities — that is, activities that do not exist in mixtures of the parental or reference antibodies. These so-called obligate bsAb are having a tremendous impact and potential in current and future drug development.
Bispecific engagers that target and activate effector cells, most commonly T cells, represent about 50% of bispecific antibodies in development. Here, next generation bispecific T cell engagers (bsTCEs) with a widened therapeutic window characterized by high potency and high tumor selectivity have strong potential for the treatment of both hematological as well as solid cancers. Lava Therapeutics is developing products building on a platform to conditionally and selectively recruit Vγ9Vδ2 T cells for eradicating tumor cells. This γδ T cell subset has been shown to display powerful anti-tumor immune effector activity, to preferentially kill tumor cells relative to normal cells and has a demonstrated ability to infiltrate human tumors. LAVA’s γδ bsTCEs designed to target and engage Vγ9Vδ2-T cells for the development of novel cancer immunotherapies will be discussed.