LEANER appears to be meaner when it comes to anticancer drugs. A new slimline
drug has caused complete remission in 11 out of 16 patients with one kind of
leukaemia, say doctors in a US report.
The drug, developed by Robert Kreitman’s team at the National Cancer
Institute near Washington DC, is called BL22. It has been engineered so that one
half is an antibody and the other is a bacterial toxin.
Coupling an antibody with a bacterial toxin isn’t new in itself. Such
“immunotoxins” have been used for over 10 years to treat some tumours, Kreitman
says.
But BL22…
