CA9hu-1

Carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX) has been implicated in the progression of most solid tumours and expression has been demonstrated in clinical samples from a variety of solid cancers. High expression is often associated with high grade or metastatic disease and poor prognosis. CA IX is not expressed in normal tissue, potentially providing a cancer-associated target that would not likely result in significant interruption of normal biologic function in organs not affected by cancer. A humanized monoclonal antibody CA9hu-1 has shown robust activity in a variety of tumour models including models of ovarian, prostate, breast, pancreatic, colon and lung where tumour growth and metastasis are inhibited when CA9hu-1 is used as a monotherapy. Enhancement of chemotherapy has also been demonstrated in several models in combination with CA9hu-1. CA IX is also expressed by tumour-associated cells (angiogenic endothelium, tumour-associated macrophages), which also drive cancer progression. Thus, targeting CA IX with CA9hu-1 in cancer patients is expected to affect multiple pathways and multiple tumour compartments that are important to tumour progression. Taken together, there is strong rationale for developing hu-CA91 for the treatment of advanced cancer. The present study was designed to establish safety and toxicity profile and maximum tolerated dose of CA9hu-1, evaluate pharmacokinetics, investigate the presence of anti-drug antibody, to document anti-tumour activity at a clinically relevant dose, and to document the use of [18F]FLT-PET as a biomarker for detection of early tumour response at a clinically relevant dose.