The Barnase-Barstar-based pre-targeting strategy for enhanced antitumor therapy in vivo

There is a great need for novel approaches to the treatment of epithelial ovarian carcinoma, which is the leading cause of mortality from gynecological malignancies. In this study, the pre-targeting technology was used to enhance the in vivo targeting of cytotoxic module composed of nanoliposomes loaded with a truncated form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (PE40) to cancer cells. Pre-targeting system used in this study is composed of bacterial ribonuclease Barnase and its natural antitoxin Barstar. Barstar, genetically fused to various engineered scaffold proteins specific to tumor-associated antigens (HER2, EpCAM) serves as a primary module for precise cancer cell recognition. Barnase conjugated to a therapeutic agent serves as a cytotoxic or secondary module for malignant cell elimination. Due to strong non-covalent interaction (K_D10⁻¹⁴ M) of Barstar and Barnase, the primary and secondary modules efficiently interact with each other on the cell surface, which has been proven by confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. Using mice with SKOV-3 ovarian cancer xenografts, we have shown that regardless of the targeting module, the pre-targeting approach is much more effective than a single-step active targeting.