Submitted June 27, 2007
Accepted September 21, 2007
Macrophages contribute to the antitumor activity of the anti-CD30 antibody SGN-30
Ezogelin Oflazoglu, Ivan J Stone, Kristine A Gordon, Iqbal S Grewal, Nico van Rooijen, Che-Leung Law, and Hans-Peter Gerber*
Department of Translational Biology, Seattle Genetics, Inc., Seattle, WA, United States
Department of Molecular Oncology and Immunology, Seattle Genetics, Inc., Seattle, WA, United States
Department of Preclinical Therapeutics, Seattle Genetics, Inc., Seattle, WA, United States
Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
* Corresponding author; email: hgerber{at}seagen.com.
Increased expression of CD30 is associated with a variety of hematologic malignancies, including Hodgkin's disease (HD) and anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). The anti-CD30 monoclonal antibody SGN-30 induces direct antitumor activity by promoting growth arrest and DNA fragmentation of CD30 positive tumor cells. In this study, we investigated the contributions of Fc-mediated effector cell functions to SGN-30 activity. We determined that antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP), mediated by macrophages, to contribute significantly to antitumor activity in vitro. To delineate the identity of the host effector cells involved in mediating anti-tumor activity in vivo, we studied the effects of effector cell ablation in a disseminated model of HD (L540cy). Depletion of macrophages markedly reduced efficacy of SGN-30 demonstrating that macrophages contribute significantly to SGN-30 efficacy in this model. These findings may have implications for patient stratification or combination treatment strategies in clinical trials conducted with SGN-30 in HD and ALCL.
