Engineering death receptor ligands for cancer therapy.

CD95, TNFR1, TRAILR1 and TRAILR2 belong to a subgroup of TNF receptors which is characterized by a conserved cell death-inducing protein domain that connects these receptors to the apoptotic machinery of the cell. Activation of death receptors in malignant cells attracts increasing attention as a principle to fight cancer. Besides agonistic antibodies the major way to stimulate death receptors is the use of their naturally occurring "death ligands" CD95L, TNF and TRAIL. However, dependent from the concept followed to develop a death ligand-based therapy various limiting aspects have to be taken into consideration on the way to a "bedside" usable drug. Problems arise in particular from the cell associated transmembrane nature of the death ligands, the poor serum half life of the soluble fragments derived from the transmembrane ligands, the ubiquitous expression of the death receptors and the existence of additional non-death receptors of the death ligands. Here, we summarize strategies how these limitations can be overcome by genetic engineering.

Therapeutic targeting of CD95 and the TRAIL death receptors.

The death receptors CD95, TRAILR1 and TRAILR2 induce cell death in many types of tumor cells. Activation of these receptors has received considerable interest due to its potential use in cancer therapy. In particular the observation that most primary cells are not or only barely TRAIL-sensitive resulted in the development of targeted therapy concepts that base on activation of the TRAIL death receptors by recombinant TRAIL or agonistic antibodies. Indeed, a variety of preclinical studies and several phase I and II clinical trials show that activation of TRAIL death receptors effectively induces apoptosis in cancer cells in vivo without therapy-limiting toxicity on normal cells. Primary tumor cells are often sparsely sensitive for TRAIL death receptor-mediated apoptosis or acquire resistance during therapy. Sensitization/resensitization of tumor cells by chemotherapeutic drugs or radiation can therefore be necessary for TRAIL-based therapies, but this involves the danger of triggering side effects related to the breakage of apoptosis resistance of non-transformed cells. Thus, there is a foreseeable need to develop optimized combination therapies or to locally restrict TRAIL receptor activation to fully exploit the antitumoral potential of TRAIL death receptors in the clinic. Although the high sensitivity of hepatocytes for CD95-mediated apoptosis prohibits therapies resulting in systemic activation of CD95, several studies have shown that this limitation can be overcome by ex vivo treatment regimes or by CD95 activating agonists with cell type-specific activity. This patent review is focused on the death receptor agonists currently under consideration in clinical trials, but also addresses the hurdles that have to be cleared to broaden and to improve the applicability of the currently used clinical concepts related to death receptor activation.

Improving TNF as a cancer therapeutic: tailor-made TNF fusion proteins with conserved antitumor activity and reduced systemic side effects.

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is highly pleiotropic cytokine regulating diverse cellular processes such as proliferation, cell migration, angiogenesis, differentiation, apoptosis, necrosis, but also survival. Because of its name-giving tumor necrosis-inducing capabilities, TNF has attracted attention very early for antitumor therapy. Although TNF is in clinical use for treatment of soft tissue sarcoma in isolated limb perfusion, its broad use in tumor therapy is prevented so far by its strong systemic proinflammatory effects. Nevertheless, over the past decade, a variety of tailor-made TNF variants have been developed with the aim to reduce TNFs systemic activity without losing its antitumoral effects. Here, we review the progress made toward improving the efficacy of TNF by genetic engineering, tumor targeting, and introduction of prodrug concepts.

Death ligands designed to kill: development and application of targeted cancer therapeutics based on proapoptotic TNF family ligands.

The identification of molecular markers associated with cancer development or progression, opened a new era in the development of therapeutics. The successful introduction of a few low molecular weight chemicals and recombinant protein therapeutics with targeted actions into clinical practice have raised great expectations to broadly improve cancer therapy with respect to both overall clinical responses and tolerability. Targeting the apoptotic machinery of malignant cells is an attractive concept to combat cancer, which is currently exploited for the proapoptotic members of the TNF ligand family at various stages of preclinical and clinical development. This review summarizes recent progress in this rapidly progressing field of "biologic" therapies targeting the death receptors of TNF, CD95L, and TRAIL by means of its cognate protein ligands, receptor specific antibodies, and gene therapeutic approaches. Preclinical data on newly derived variants and fusion proteins based on these death ligands, designed to act in a tumor restricted manner, thereby preventing a systemic, potentially harmful action, will also be discussed.

Single-chain TNF, a TNF derivative with enhanced stability and antitumoral activity.

The inflammatory and proapoptotic cytokine TNF possesses a compelling potential as an antitumoral therapeutic agent. Possible target cells include the malignant cells themselves, the tumor vasculature, or the immune system. As the clinical use of TNF is limited by systemic toxicity, targeting strategies using TNF-based fusion proteins are currently used. A major obstacle, however, is that homotrimeric TNF ligands are prone to activity loss due to dissociation into their monomers. In this study, we report the construction of single-chain TNF molecule, a TNF mutant consisting of three TNF monomers fused by short peptide linkers. In comparison to wild-type TNF, single-chain TNF was found to possess increased stability in vitro and in vivo, displayed reduced systemic toxicity yet slightly enhanced antitumoral activity in mouse models. Creation of single-chain variants is a new approach for improvement of functional activity of therapeutics based on TNF family ligands.

Target-selective activation of a TNF prodrug by urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) mediated proteolytic processing at the cell surface.

We have previously developed TNF prodrugs comprised of a N-terminal scFv targeting, a TNF effector and a C-terminal TNFR1-derived inhibitor module linked to TNF via a MMP-2 motif containing peptide, allowing activation by MMP-2-expressing tumor cells. To overcome the known heterogeneity of matrix metalloprotease expression, we developed TNF prodrugs that become processed by other tumor and/or stroma-associated proteases. These TNF prodrugs comprise either an uPA-selective or a dual uPA-MMP-2-specific linker which displayed efficient, target-dependent and cleavage sequence-specific activation by the corresponding tumor cell-expressed proteases. Selective pharmacologic inhibition of endogenous uPA and MMP-2 confirm independent prodrug processing by these two model proteases and indicate the functional superiority of a prodrug containing a multi-specific protease linker. Processing optimised TNF prodrugs should increase the proportion of active therapeutic within the targeted tissue and thus potentially enhance tumor response rate.

Tumor therapeutics by design: targeting and activation of death receptors.

Due to their strong apoptosis-inducing capacity, the death receptor ligands CD95L, TNF and TRAIL have been widely viewed as potential cancer therapeutics. While clinical data with CD95L and TRAIL are not yet available, TNF is a registered drug, albeit only for loco-regional application in a limited number of indications. The TNF experience has told us that specific delivery and restricted action is a major challenge in the development of multifunctional, pleiotropically acting cytokines into effective cancer therapeutics. Thus, gene-therapeutic approaches and new cytokine variants have been designed over the last 10 years with the aim of increasing anti-tumoral activity and reducing systemic side effects. Here, we present our current view of the therapeutic potential of the death receptor ligands TNF, CD95L and TRAIL and of the progress made towards improving their efficacy by tumor targeting, use of gene therapy and genetic engineering. Results generated with newly designed fusion proteins suggest that enhanced tumor-directed activity and prevention of undesirable actions of death receptor ligands is possible, thereby opening up a useful therapeutic window for all of the death receptor ligands, including CD95L.

Long-term NR2B expression in the cerebellum alters granule cell development and leads to NR2A down-regulation and motor deficits.

N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) composition in granule cells changes characteristically during cerebellar development. To analyze the importance of NR2B replacement by NR2C and NR2A subunits until the end of the first month of age, we generated mice with lasting NR2B expression but deficiency for NR2C (NR2C-2B mice). Mutant phenotype was different from NR2C knock-out mice as loss of granule cells and morphological changes in NR2C/2B cerebellar architecture were already evident from the second postnatal week. Increased NR2B subunit levels led also to a gradual down-regulation of cerebellar NR2A levels, preceding the development of motor impairment in adult animals. Therefore, cerebellar NR2A is important for proper motor coordination and cannot be replaced by long-term expression of NR2B. Consequently, the physiological exchange of NMDA receptor subunits during cerebellar granule cell maturation is important for accurate postnatal development and function.

Generation of a FasL-based proapoptotic fusion protein devoid of systemic toxicity due to cell-surface antigen-restricted Activation.

We describe the construction of a FasL fusion protein devoid of systemic toxicity, inducing apoptosis only on cell-surface antigen-positive cells. The fusion protein consists carboxyl-terminally of the extracellular domain of FasL and amino-terminally of a fibroblast activation protein (FAP)-specific single chain antibody fragment (sc40-FasL). The latter allows immobilization-dependent conversion of the inactive soluble FasL fusion protein into an entity with membrane FasL-like activity. Thus, sc40-FasL efficiently induced apoptosis only in FAP-expressing cells. In accordance with a strict target-selective activity of sc40-FasL, the intravenous application of this reagent in mice revealed no signs of systemic toxicity and prevented growth of xenotransplanted FAP-positive (but not FAP-negative) tumor cells. The principle described here for the first time, in which cell-surface antigen-mediated activation of Fas permits local activation of Fas in vivo, opens novel avenues for the use of Fas signaling in cancer therapy.

TNF-Selectokine: a novel prodrug generated for tumor targeting and site-specific activation of tumor necrosis factor.

We describe a TNF fusion protein designated TNF-Selectokine, which is a homo-trimeric molecule comprised of a single chain antibody (scFv) targeting module, a trimerization domain and TNF. TNF-Selectokine exerts high bioactivity towards the targeted and adjacent, antigen negative cells. Membrane targeting dependent immobilization of the TNF-Selectokine induced cell death in TNFR1 and TNFR2 dependent manner, thus cell bound TNF-Selectokine mimicks membrane TNF. To restrict TNF activity to the tumor, a prototype of a TNF-Selectokine prodrug was constructed by insertion of a TNFR1 fragment, separated from TNF by a protease-sensitive linker. The prodrug exerts minimal TNF activity, but can be activated in vitro several thousand-fold by proteolytic digest, showing the principal feasibility of this approach. Choice of cleavage site(s) recognized by protease(s) typically associated with a given carcinoma should allow high dose systemic application of the respective TNF prodrug that unveils its specific bioactivity only in targeted tissues.