Bispecific antibodies in clinical practice: Understanding recent advances and current place in cancer treatment landscape.

Abstract

Immunotherapy has changed the treatment landscape of cancer in the past decade. Amongst various forms of immunotherapy, manipulating the T cell has shown promise in past few years. T cell manipulation can be done by CAR-T cell therapy or bispecific antibodies. These 2 therapeutic modalities have been studied and shown efficacy in hematologic malignancies in relapsed refractory setting. They have not been compared to each other in randomized control trials; hence, the adequate sequencing is not known. Although cross-trial comparison is not ideal, available evidence indicates toward similar efficacy and better tolerability of BiTEs compared to CAR-T cell therapy. Bispecific antibodies, though, have an advantage of being able to be used in an "off the shelf" manner considering these are not MHC specific and can be administered to all patients regardless of HLA type. There has been an explosive growth in the indications for bispecific antibodies in the recent past. In this article, we have reviewed recent approvals, indication and literature regarding efficacy and adverse effects of bispecific antibodies in all available indications. This will be a useful read for clinical practitioners to understand the mechanism of action and place of all available bispecific antibodies in the current oncology landscape.