The Bristol-Myers researchers aren’t the first to use an antibody t= drugs into tumor cells, new findings suggest they’ve devised a particularly effective weapon. To test their compound (dubbed BR96-DOX), they removed cells from human lung, colon and breast tumors and injected them into mice. The animals were riddled with malignancy by the time they received the drug-antibody compound, yet most of them recovered completely after treatment. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers reported that the treatment cured seven of eight mice that received lung-cancer transplants, seven of nine that got colon-cancer grafts and five of nine that were injected with breast cancer. When mice got the drug without the antibody, their tumors didn’t shrink at all. People may not respond as dramatically as rodents; because the antibody is derived partly from mice, the human system may destroy it can do its job. But the first human trials could begin as early as next year.
