9 Classes of Drug Conjugates: Characteristics, Development Progress And Future Development Trend

WATERTOWN, Mass. - Aug. 24, 2022 - PRLog -- In recent years, the scope and application scenarios of drug conjugates, including multiple concepts such as combination medication and precise drug delivery, have continued to expand, and a variety of emerging conjugation technology concepts have emerged one after another. There are 9 types of drug conjugates.

01 Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC)

ADC drugs consist of three parts: antibodies, linkers, and effector molecules (small molecule cytotoxic drugs).

As of December 2021, a total of 14 ADC drugs have been approved for marketing, and more than 400 announced ADC drug candidates are under development, mainly in the fields of cancer, rare diseases and hematologic diseases.

02 Polypeptide Drug Conjugates (PDC)

The principle of PDC is to couple cell-targeting peptides with drug molecules to enhance the targeting of the drug, so that the drug is concentrated in the target tissue, thereby reducing its relative concentration in other tissues, improving effectiveness and reducing adverse reactions.

03 Antibody Fragment Drug Conjugates (FDC)

Unlike whole monoclonal antibodies used in ADCs, FDCs conjugate antibody fragments to cytotoxic drugs. Due to the small molecular weight of the antibody fragments, the tumor penetration of FDC is better.

04 Immunostimulatory Antibody Conjugates (ISAC)

ISACs consist of tumor-targeting mAbs coupled to immune agonists through a non-cleavable linker, and can combine the tumor-targeting precision of antibodies, the killing potential of the innate and adaptive immune systems into a single drug.

05 Antibody Biopolymer Conjugates (ABC)

Ophthalmology-focused Kodiak Sciences, leveraging its proprietary ABC technology platform, is developing anti-VEGF-macromolecular phosphorylcholine polymer conjugate KSI-301 for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema and retinal vein occlusion, currently in phase III clinical trials.

06 Small Molecule Drug Conjugates (SMDC)

The research and development of SMDC, is still advancing in a stumble, and its related research has not yet achieved breakthrough progress.

07 Radionuclide Drug Conjugates (RDC)

RDCs are primarily composed of antibodies or small molecules, linkers, chelators, and cytotoxic/imaging factors (radioisotopes) that mediate targeting. The targeting of antibodies or small molecules (including peptides) is used to achieve the purpose of precise radiotherapy.

08 Virus-like Drug Donjugates (VDC)

VDC is coupled to a potent cytotoxic drug that can be activated by infrared light. The activated VDC can generate high levels of singlet oxygen, selectively destroy tumor cells, resulting in acute necrosis of tumor cells.

09 Antibody-siRNA conjugates (ARC)

The scientific research of using antibodies to deliver siRNA can be traced back to 15 years ago when Harvard professor Judy Lieberman and her team expressed Protamine fused with antibodies, and then loaded the negatively charged siRNA with the positively charged Protamine.

As a professional PEG derivatives supplier, Biopharma PEG offers a wide array of different ADC linkers (https://www.biochempeg.com/adc-conjugation) to empower customer's advanced research.